Korean Week 21

We are in the midst of Tapestry of Grace Year 4 Unit 3 week 21.  I was the person in charge of coordinating the activities for this week.

I had no idea how God would use this week to open my eyes to the pain and desperate need for transformation of North Korea.  It is one of the benefit of learning with your children, I guess it was one of my "skipped" days at school, because I had no idea of the depth of despair surrounding the Korean War and the ongoing conflict.

Thankfully Facebook, I asked if anyone knew of a Korean person in Palmer.  Yes, there is very few non-whites. I was shocked to hear that someone had a foreign exchange student from South Korea.  Yeah!  Jim was available and eager to have an opportunity to teach about Korea culture.

So, we started with prayer and then we had him share about Korea.  The kids did a great job at listening and asking good questions.  He loves his Alaskan bed (verses a rolled mat) but misses his Computer games.

At the end, we had the kids try to make Kimbap.  It is like sushi but more like a picnic food/snack food for the hands.  It can be filled with anything.  We tried it with ham and cheese.  But, we look forward to do it again with cream cheese and salmon.

He wrote out his name to compare the language alphabet.  However, he said it was to hard to talk about North Korea.  We let that go.

The next time I taught about Korea was during the Mission Conference at my church.  We did things a bit different.

1) talked about the 38th parallel and a little about the divide of the country.
2) Read an interesting story of the Pumpkin Seed (two brothers) from "The Korean Children's Favorite Stories"

-During the reading I had my son draw on the board the two different homes, consequences, blessings.
-I had four actors:  elder brother, younger brother, swallow, and snake
-three bowls with towel (representing the three pumpkins)
Then as I read the story, we used the props to act out the story.

3) I also talked about the amazing reunion of the North and South Koreans that have been going on this past year.  I had a good article with some photos to project and to continue to pray for complete healing of these two countries.

4) Instead of just praying, we watched a YouTube video of prayer for North Korea from Operation World.

5) While a few were making Kimbap, the other tables were racing using chopsticks and cotton balls into the bowls after a few lessons on chopstick etiquette.