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At Home Helps You Get Ready to Celebrate the Arrival of Summer

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At Home is a specialty retailer of home decor products with over 50,000 unique items, including furniture, garden, home textiles, housewares, patio, rugs, seasonal decor, tabletop décor, and wall decor. This means they specialize in pretty much everything you need for your home decor or party planning projects.

I’d never heard of At Home until recently, when a store opened in my area. When they say they’re a superstore, they’re not kidding! I easily spent two hours in the store on my first trip and I feel like I only saw half the store. I need to go back for a better look sometime when I have a babysitter for the day.

My goal for my first trip was to purchase items to use during the summer months. I wanted to have family and friends over to visit outside on my patio, which my husband and I are slowly trying to fix up.

If your patio furniture needs an update, At Home has an amazing selection of outdoor cushions and pillows, as well as patio umbrellas to provide shade. Mixing and matching the patterns is such a fun way to give my plain metal furniture a new look. They’re a little more money than what I was expecting, but the overall quality can’t be beat. When I invited friends over to visit outside, I couldn’t believe how comfy my old furniture was with the new cushions. We easily could have sat outside all day, had it not started raining and forced us inside! (I grabbed the watercolor flower pillows to take inside, since they’re nicer than my current couch pillows.)

My favorite thing I purchased during my trip was a metal folding side table with a pretty scroll pattern (shown in the second and third pictures on the bottom row of the above collage). It’s intended for outdoor use, but actually blends fairly well with my inside decor too.  This is a great table for entertaining because it’s just the right size for storing snacks or games and activities. If you need baskets to keep everything organized, the white plastic basket shown on the tray table was just over $5 and is very sturdy.

At Home has a several oversized drink dispensers to choose from. These are very handy when you have lots of kids in your home, since you don’t need to worry about children spilling heavy jugs of juice or bottles of soda when they try to pour themselves a drink. I wanted one for entertaining, but I like it so much that I’m using it everyday now. (I fill it up with lemonade or fruit infused water and leave it in the refrigerator.)

Visit the At Home website to review their online merchandise selection and to find a store in your area.

Disclaimer: A gift card was provided by the manufacturer for the purpose of preparing this review. 

 

 

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Learn about China for Kids

China is such a big country with such a long history we can’t possibly cover it all in one blog post, but let’s get to the basics of the People’s Republic of China for kids.

China Basics

  • China is a country in East Asia and is the second-most populous nation in the world, with a population of more than 1.4 billion people. That’s 17.4 percent of the world’s population.
  • Its area is 3.7 million square miles, or almost 9.6 million square kilometers, which makes it the third largest nation by land area. It borders 14 countries: North Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. It also borders Hong Kong and Macao, which are considered special administrative regions. Its land border is the longest of any country at 13,954 miles, or 22,457 km. It also has a 9,000 mile/14,500 km border on the Pacific Ocean. 
  • China has been inhabited by humans since the Paleolithic Era and is considered one of the cradles of civilization.
  • Gunpowder and paper, among many other things, were invented in China.
  • The country has been the People’s Republic of China since 1949 when Communists took control of the country. It is a one party socialist republic, where the leader of the Communist Party is the president.
  • Beijing is the capital but Shanghai is the largest city by population (and Chongqing is the largest by physical size).
  • The nation is 91 percent ethnically Han Chinese, and about 33 percent of the people are Buddhist.
  • Because it is so large it has many different climates, including deserts, subtropical forests, mountains, coastal and river environments, grasslands and plateaus.

Chinese National Symbols

The Chinese flag is red with a large gold star and four smaller gold stars in the upper left corner. The flag was adopted in 1949. Red represents the revolution, and the large star stands for the Chinese Communist Party. The smaller starts are for the unity of different classes of Chinese people.

The national anthem, “March of the Volunteers,” became the official national anthem in 1978. The lyrics were part of a poem written in 1934 about armies that opposed the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

There are many symbols of Chinese heritage including the Great Wall of China, Tiananmen Square and the terracotta warriors.

Chinese dragons and pandas are also considered symbols of the country, and the panda is the national animal. Plum blossoms and chrysanthemums are popular flowers. Unofficially, the red-crowned crane or Manchurian crane is the national bird.

Chinese Learning Activities for Kids

There are so many options for activities related to China, but here are a few things to get you started.

Pack More into Life has a great China unit study broken down into three days that includes crafts, food, music, folktales and more.

Mr. Donn has a great set of informative pages about ancient China, including an introduction to Confucius, Taoism, Buddhism, the major dynasties, oracle bones, cultural achievenemts and more.

Learn more about the Great Wall of China, the terracotta soldiers, and the giant panda. You can even throw a panda party with help from Red Ted Art. Or have kids build their own Great Wall of China with this activity from How Wee Learn.

Play Mahjong online or learn the basic rules of mahjong (not very basic!).

Learn about the lunar new year, make dragon crafts and snake crafts for the year of the snake (2025).

Check out more activities at Activity Village and Teachers Pay Teachers.

It’s hard to say what the national dish of China might be because it’s so large and diverse, but one you can make at home is Hot Pot. Check out the recipe from The Woks of Life. Listen to some traditional Chinese music while you eat!