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.