Studying Japan ::Week 2::

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 (Bang) - we read this book aloud and McKenna also read it to me
• 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!!}