Mongols and Genghis Khan in China

We have been studying about Genghis Khan and his take over of China. He was a horrible, horrible man. Some of the things he and his group did gave us the shivers, like toting his men along who died to throw the rotting bodies at enemies when they were fighting and drinking his horse's blood when hungry and then sewing the horse back up so they could ride them. Ewww. Just mentioning his name scared people enough that they wouldn't fight back against his armies.

To stop the Mongols from having easy access to China the Great Wall of China was built. While reading about the wall we learned about chops. Writers and illustrators use a chop to sign their work. A chop was a symbol or seal to represent themselves and it was hard for others to duplicate them because they were made out of stone (set in stone). When people were unable to write their name they would use these chops. It was a sort of rubber stamp. On a document they needed to sign they would dip the chop in bright red ink, to symbolize signing in blood, and then press it on the paper. The kids each designed what they would use for a chop.
Here is Spark's chop, he is usually the minimalist when it comes to projects and this project proved no different.

Dancer got much fancier with her chop. She designed quite a few and settled on this lady bug for the one to show on the blog.

The Mongols were nomads sealing, or I should just say taking, everything they wanted so there was no need for them to own or work land. They lived in these felt covered houses, think yurt, that they hauled around with them. The kids made a mongol camp and a back ground for it. Dancer's side has a road with a man cooking at fire. Spark brought in the big guns on his side and pulled out a dragon to make them crispy and good with ketchup.

Lastly, the kids made Chinese hanging lanterns. I have not thought of these since grade school and thought my kids can't grow up without making them at least once. They painted landscape scenes with water colors on white paper, let them dry, and cut the strips to make the lantern. These turned out quite pretty.