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Exploring Pakistan -- Global Learning for Kids


This month we have been exploring Pakistan as part of Global Learning for Kids. I have to have a proud mommy moment and tell you that our exploration of all these countries helped Hazel tie for third in her school Geography Bee and it was first through six grade!! I was so proud of her! Now onto our exploration of Pakistan. 
Pakistan in its region (claimed and disputed hatched)
Pakistan By TUBS [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

For those that do not know, Pakistan is officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. It is located in Southern Asia and is the sixth most populous country in the world. It gained its independence from Britain and split from India in 1947. It became the country for Muslims and as it became a new country millions of Muslims moved to Pakistan and millions of Hindus moved to India from Pakistan. Muslim is the official religion of Pakistan and many of the laws and culture is around the religion. (Source)
We started our exploration with some books about Pakistan. These are two of the books we really liked. In fact the Fiesta! series had a felt hat craft for hats that boys and men would wear to mosque. Hazel of course wanted one. I changed the colors around (the hat in the book was green with red embroidery). She likes it!

 As we always do we also read some stories and watched this DVD acting out a folktale from Pakistan.

 We also read some stories about Pakistani children like Malala and Iqbal.

 We enjoyed reading this book that shared a bit about Iqbal from another child's point of view.

 We also enjoyed this story about a Pakistani-American girl being a flower girl in her aunt's wedding and coming to terms with her hands decorated with mehndi in the traditional Pakistani way.
 As part of our study of India we did a henna hand craft that goes with this perfectly!

Our final part of our exploration involved learning about snow leopards. The first book we read was Leo the Snow Leopard which shares the true story of how Pakistan and America worked together with many others to save this orphaned snow leopard cub. He came to live at the Bronx Zoo in New York and has had his cubs born there. (For more information about Leo check out this article.)

 With Hazel's love of animals we wanted to check out more about snow leopards. The most informative book we found was this one. Snow leopards live in Central and South Asia and are endangered. For educational resources check out here.

 Every once in awhile we get a quick view of the snow leopard at our local zoo, however it is often just a paw hanging over the rock edge. 
This is a Global Learning for Kids post. Please share any posts you have about Pakistan here and check out all the other great ideas shared to teach our children about this interesting country.