Children's Chinese Book Garden

Each year in the summer and early Fall, we raise several hundred silkworms. We watch them hatch, grow from tiny baby worms into fat adult worms, spin cacoons, and come out as moths. We take good care of them and they teach us so many things and give us so much fun. We learn how anticent Chinese discovered how to make silk, how they kept it a secret for thousands of years, how the Silk Road developed for ancient Chinese to trade silk with people far away in other countries. We map out where the Silk Road was in China, make models of the caravans, sew silk purses, and learn all kinds of Chinese words to describe all of these. 

They start from eggs.

We are taking care of the baby worms

We are taking care of the big worms

Our Baby Silkworms

Delicious Mulberry Leaves

Cleaning up their waste

Ready to Spin Cacoons

Our Cacoons

This is Fei Fei

Fei Fei Eating

Fei Fei Spinning Cacoon

Fei Fei's Cacoon

Fei Fei the Moth Came Out

Reading How Ancient Chinese Made Silk

Reconstructing the Silk Road

Learning How to Write Silkworm in Chinese

Making Silk Purse