Academy Street Elementary students spent an afternoon learning all about China during the fun and educational workshop, “Let’s Go to China” presented by Patricia Shih.
Students were led through 5,000 years of history as they learned of inventions and discoveries that the Chinese contributed to the world as well as artifacts, including coins, parasols, kites, puppets and more. They learned about sericulture, or the cultivation of silk, studying different garments and embroidery samples. Students then participated in an exercise on language, learning how to understand, speak, read and write words, simple phrases and numbers using Chinese characters.
Student volunteers then got to test out traditional Chinese instruments such as gongs and Chinese spinning drums and learned how to do a traditional ribbon dance to music. The lively presentation culminated with a high-energy finale, celebrating Lunar New Year. For the festivities, students played instruments while a lucky few volunteers donned a lion dance costume while parading through the room.
