Unit Study: South Korea

 The second portion of our Asia worldschooling trip will be in South Korea, so that was our next subject of study! Here are the books we read:

The House Before Falling Into the Sea, by Ann Suk Wang
King Sejong Invents an Alphabet, by Carol Kim
My Indigo World, by Rosa Chang
Let's Play Jegi, by Im Seo-Ha
Let's Play Ddakji, by Im Seo-Ha
The Ocean Calls, by Tina Cho
Korean Nursery Rhymes, by Danielle Wright
When Spring Comes to the DMZ, by Yi Ok-Pae
All Around the World: South Korea, by Joanne Mattern
All About Korea, by Ann Martin Bowler
My First Book of Korean Words, by Henry J. Amen and Kyubyong Park
Kimchi, Kimchi Every Day, by Erica Kim
Mommy's Hometown, by Hope Lim
Living in South Korea, by Chloe Perkins
The Mindy Kim series, by Lyla Lee

Through all of our reading, we learned a bit about Korean culture and history. We watched some videos to learn about Korean art and music, both traditional and K-pop! We also enjoyed trying to play ddakji, a game that we learned about in Let's Play Ddakji. While it was fun to make the paper ddakjis, it was much harder to actually play the game!

We also watched several YouTube videos to learn about the language. We've also been using DuoLingo to practice. Pumpkin especially has taken an interest in learning the language, and is picking it up much faster than the rest of us (even the grown-ups!). 

And of course, we learned about food! We enjoyed watching the Seoul episode of Street Food: Asia, on Netflix. We also learned about mukbang and food-related vlogs on YouTube. We are now really curious to visit a Korean convenience store! And of course, we finished of our unit study with a trip to a local Korean restaurant! We tried kimchi, kimbap, bibimbap, kimchi pancakes, and bulgogi. The owner was excited to hear that we are going to Korea, and gave us some suggestions for things to try. He also brought us a few pieces of Korean fried chicken to try. I was glad that we were able to say thank you in Korean, but dismayed that that was the only word we remembered! However, we took a to-go menu home with us, and Pumpkin was able to sound out all of the Korean words during the ride home. So, maybe we'll survive our trip with her help!