This was our second week learning about Japan and the girls had a lot of fun with many “hands-on” activities: origami, watercolors, calligraphy, puppet theatres, and Japanese screens. Much reading and even a great video or two thrown in. Since Japan has over 70 volcanoes, we are going to be doing a unit on volcanoes next week – as requested by the girls!
Monday
- Review what we learned last week
- We used Kids Web Japan to look at the history of kimonos different types of kimonos and had fun doing a virtual game dressing girls and seeing where they would wear the kimono and outfit that we picked for them.
- Japanese screens ~ Each of the girls designed their own Japanese screen trying to follow each of the four seasons.
Tuesday
- Mapping/labeling Japan {see printable below}
- Made a fun little Japanese counting booklet and practiced our calligraphy.
Wednesday
- We first read The Paper Crane
(Bang) and then picked out a few pieces of origami to make: a mask and a boat…fairly simple but fun!
Thursday
- The girls colored and put together their own Banraku puppet theatre. We found some great links on youtube to see some theatre in action too.
Literature we focused on:
- Sadako and a Thousand Paper Cranes
(Coerr) – this was the book Laurianna read independently this week
- The Paper Crane
- The Boy of the 3 Year Nap
(Snyder) – independent reading for McKenna
- Japanese Children’s Favorite Stories
(Sakade) – read aloud stories to the girls.
Some other great links for Japan:
- Homeschool Share unit/lapbook on the Crow Boy
- Christian Homeschoolers. com – lots of links and resources for Japan
- Smithsonian Education – included 3 different lesson plans about Japanese art, screens, etc..
- Travel for Kids – many links and great book references
- Time for Kids – mini tour of Japan including history timeline, native lingo, a day in the life
- BBC Science and Nature – pictures and facts on the Japanese macaque
- Family Fun – Japanese paper dolls
- Lapbook Lessons – lapbook and unit on Japan {only wish I had found this earlier!!}
by Mary Pope Osborne and the kids also enjoyed listening to the audiobook when Laurianna had finished reading it on her own. We’ve also been reading stories from 
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