THE YEAR OF THE BOOK
CROSS CURRICULAR ACTIVITITES
English/reading literature:
See the curriculum guide for 4th grade and the discussion questions.
Social studies
Immigration
1. Anna’s mother is an immigrant from China.
Anna’s father is ABC or “American Born Chinese.”
Anna and Ken were born in the United States.
Make a family tree of the Wang family. Read about Chinese immigration to the United States. Why did many immigrants come from China to California in the early 1800’s? What were their lives like? Do you think America was a welcoming country? Why or why not? Read about the Chinese Exclusion Act in ____. How do you think this affected the new immigrants?
2. Read about immigration today. What is “The Dream Act”?
Are you or anyone in your family an immigrant? From which country? When and why did your ancestors immigrate to the United States? If possible interview a new immigrant. You may want to include the following questions:
Why did you leave your home country?
Why did you come to the United States?
What has been the hardest part of coming to a new country?
Describe some of your best experiences. Describe some of your worst experiences?
What advice would you give to new immigrants to the United States?
Chinese culture
1. Describe some elements of Chinese culture that you found in The Year of the Book.
(Anna’s last name
Chinese class
Wantons
Chopsticks
Chinese words like peng you
Chinese characters in glossary
Tangrams
The title of the book
Holidays like Chinese New Year
The Chinese zodiac.)
2. Practice the words listed in the glossary. Practice using them with your classmates. Can you say how many children are in your family in Chinese? Can you write the character?
Geography
1. Look at a map of the world. Find China. Why do you think the first immigrants from China often went to California. Draw the route that the ships took when they crossed the Pacific Ocean.
2. Find the country that your ancestors immigrated from. Show the route they might have taken to come to America.
Science
1. On the way to school (p.33) Anna sees a double rainbow. What causes us to see rainbows? Why are they in the shape of an arc? What causes the colors of the rainbow? Why are some rainbows double?
2. In science class, Anna and her classmates make observations about birds’ nests. How can you tell which type of bird made the nest from looking at it? What are some of the similarities of all birds’ nests? What are the differences?
3. How can you use your senses to make observations?
4. On p. 81, Laura and Anna play with her gerbils. What are gerbils? Which animal family are they in?
5. When Laura gets bitten by a gerbil (p. 81) Anna is worried that Laura will get rabies. What is rabies? Anna suggests putting Bactine on Laura’s finger. What is Bactine? Why is it useful?
6. Laura’s brothers are making a tennis ball shooter with big springs. How do you think it works? Draw a design of how you think it might look. What are the springs for? How do springs work? (p. 83)
7. Anna and Laura find a piece of blue silk fabric (p. 100). What is silk? How is it made?
8. Anna and Laura mention the picture book, Little Blue and Little Yellow. In the book, blue and yellow overlap, forming green. Try mixing lube and yellow paint. What do you get? Why do the colors change when they are mixed? What sort of a change is this?
9. Camille writes a report about George Washington Carver. Why was he famous?
Math
1. Anna and Ken sort their Halloween candy into Kit Kats, M and M’s, Jolly Ranchers, bubblegum, and miscellaneous. Decide how many pieces they have of each kind of candy. Then make a bar graph showing the results.
2. Trick or treating starts at 6:00 (p. 49.) Anna says they still have fifteen minutes to get ready. What time is it when she says this?
3. If the mini cereal boxes that Anna likes come in a package with three rows and four boxes in each row, how many mini cereal boxes are in the whole package?
4. Make your own set of Tangrams by cutting a square into seven shapes (p.64) How many triangles do you have? Rectangles? Other shapes?
5. Anna and Laura divide the fabric scraps into ones they like, ones they don’t like, and ones they sort of like. Make a bar graph representing these three categories. How many pieces of fabric do you think they put into each column?
6. Ray tells Anna and Laura that he can go back to work in 900 minutes. How many hours is this?
7. Anna is studying Chinese characters. If it takes her five minutes to learn each one, and she has twenty to learn, how long will it take her to learn all of them?