China History Co-op. - Week 6 - Qin Dynasty

Week 6 - We built The Great Wall of China.

The Qin Emperor united the warring states of China through warfare. He established many standards including money, weights and measures and many more such as standard axle width. We discussed the meaning of united and then did an activity to demonstrate how not having standard money works.

The kids split up into groups of two. Each group received a quantity of something to trade - silks, spices, rice, wheat, beads, etc... Some measuring tools were available - a scale, measuring spoons and measuring cups. At first each group was only allowed to trade with one other group, but then we opened it up. The kids loved trading their items in the market.

Then we read the book The Great Wall of China by Leonard Everett Fisher and began our great walls.

The walls were made from cardboard, sugar cubes and icing glue.

Icing Glue Recipe
6 egg whites
2 lbs powdered sugar
1 tsp cream of tartar


The kids started with the raised walkways. They drew their walkways on cardboard, cut them out and then transferred the path onto the base. On the base they dribbled icing along the path and then added sugar cubes.

Once their walls were high enough they glued the walkway in place and added a few more cubes along the edges of the walkway.


It took a lot of people to build The Great Wall of China. Each child built a section and together we had a great wall.

To see our other history activities please visit our history page.




15 comments:

  1. Great job, we are going to do China next year so I will be keeping this activity in my head:)

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  2. What a neat project! Thanks for linking up!

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  3. Super cute! We did that last year and ours was made out of play-doh on the map.

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  4. wow, now that is an inspiring craft. Never thought of using sugar cubes to do crafts with. Such a fantastic idea :)
    New follower from blog hop
    http://www.greatfamilyadventures.com

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  5. I LOVE your Great Wall of China -that is super cool!! What a great activity for your study. I am your newest Facebook fan =-) Thanks for linking up to TGIF! If you have a moment I'd love your vote in Circle of Moms Top 25 Homeschooling blogs (http://www.circleofmoms.com/top25/Top-25-Homeschooling-Moms-2012) - Thanks!!
    Beth
    www.livinglifeintentionally.blogspot.com

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  6. How fun! We made an igloo with sugar cubes once but we'll have to give this a try too. Thanks for sharing!

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  7. What a fun activity! I used to have my class make Washington DC landmarks out of sugar cubes. Too bad the ants liked them so much.

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  8. Lovely idea! We love making things with sugar cubes! Thanks for linking up. x

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  9. They came out great! Thanks for linking up!

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  10. The "Great Wall" looks like a lot of fun. Thanks for letting me peak in through a link up. - Carmen

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  11. Thanks for linking to Look What We Did. I've pinned this to my history board.

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  12. I really like how you did this whole lesson. I know my girls would love to trade at the market too, and the walls came out great! Thanks so much for sharing this on We Made That!

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  13. This is awesome- my kids would love this. Definitely going to try out the sugar cube building. Thanks for the idea. Popping over from Sun Scholars...I blog over at http://thehandleyhome.blogspot.com.

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  14. Great project! I haven't built with sugar cubes since I was a kid for history class. I know my boys would love them!

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