Guest Posted April 16, 2007 Posted April 16, 2007 Does anyone have any ideas or resources for celebrating Japanese Children's day on May 5th. Thank you! Rose
Guest Posted April 17, 2007 Posted April 17, 2007 Hi Rose We have just had an International Week in my school and each class chose a country - we chose Japan (Reception class). The children and I learned alot about Japan, clothes, language and important festivals and customs. Do you just want ideas about Children's Day? Children's day - families display samurai dolls on tiered shelves. We talked about how we can grow up to be healthy, brave and strong like warriors (as this is what parents want for their children). Showed photos of carp banners outside houses. (The carp is a strong, brave fish which can leap a waterfall and swim against the current). I found a few things by googling "Japan" and "Japanese Boys' Day" - I found a great poem "My fish is flying high" on an early years site (sorry can't remember name of it, try googling). Also great images on google images. We made carp kites and took them outside and sang the song together. The boys also made samurai warrior helmets using paper folding (origami) (this was while girls were belly dancing with professional dancer - otherwise I would have done it with whole class)!! Again I found instructions to make helmets on an origami website. Other things we did throughout that week: made cherry blossoms (sticking tissue paper to sticks) and learned a song called "Sakura" made sushi, noodles and fried rice - ate with chopsticks learned about Dolls' festival (3 March) and talked about things precious to them (lots of writing/speaking and listening opps) - made a display of our precious things/toys turned home area into Japanese home (Japanese newspapers, Japanese food cartons, chopsticks etc, put china tea set out on low table for Japanese tea ceremony, put slippers in home area and children took off their shoes as they entered and put on slippers). played Japanese music, wore kimonos designed and made fans (with cherry blossom design, stripes and other images of their choice) drew Japanese flag on computer paint program learned hello, goodbye etc in Japanese and called register in different languages (we have over 20 different languages throughout our school with only 110 children on roll). We also produced a large mural for display in school grounds and performed "Sakura" for whole school and parents on last day.
Guest Posted April 17, 2007 Posted April 17, 2007 Hi again Rose Found my planning book with websites I used as starting point www.childfun.com www.enchantedlearning.com Enjoy. We had a great time spending a whole week finding out about Japan. We did lots of writing, phonics and maths around this work (ordered carp kites - long, short, shortest etc) - linked to Children's Day. We used positional language (whose special toy is next to/below _____'s - using our tiered display of toys - linked to Dolls' Festival). The children measured, ordered containers of dried rice (some just enjoyed pouring the rice and using words - full, empty etc)
Guest Posted April 19, 2007 Posted April 19, 2007 Thank you both of you, lots of great ideas!! I am about to check out those web sites. Rose
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