Never the same 2 days running: Japan in January

Thursday 9 January 2014

Japan in January

Well. unfortunately, we're not going to Japan in real life, we just had Japan as the theme for the January session at our local Home Ed group.
The children are always really glad to see their friends at this session. It seemed like such a long time since we'd seen our HE friends because of Christmas and New Year. We saw lots of family and non-HE friends instead :)
There were a few different activities to choose from - pagoda building; manga drawing; a whole table of volcano related stuff; crafts for Boys' Day, Girls Day, New Years Festival; Origami and sushi making. They also got to watch Kiki's Delivery Service [DVD] from Studio Ghibli.

Giraffe and Heart

There was plenty of playing out, despite the cold and as always we had a splendid lunch.

Sushi by The Girl

I found an excellent book, JAPANESE CRAFTS FOR SCHOOLS in a charity shop, full of craft ideas and information about Japanese life, festivals and traditions. I look forward to looking at Japan for a little longer with my children and using some more of the ideas from it.Some of the crafts need to be done at home as they involve woodwork, so nice to have a book that takes craft beyond the usual paper or textile options :)
What we learnt -
- pagodas have five archtectural elements corresponding to Earth, Wind, Fire, Water and the Void.
- New Year celebrations last for 3 days. It is a very important festival in Japan.
- how to slice a roll of sushi cleanly by wetting the knife and slicing forwards first.

Later, The Girl had a cornet lesson and they both went swimming with their Dad at Barnsley Metrodome.

Printables
Worksheets, puzzles etc
Carp craft colouring sheets etc
Lapbook 1
Lapbook 2
Calligraphy worksheets
Enchanted Learning
Colouring pages

Japan themed crafts
Using toilet roll tubes and CDs
Mount Fuji model
Japanese paper craft models
Origami Peace Crane
More Origami
Sushi making
Printable paper crafts

Books