Learning At Home: Japan

As we had planned for a vacation to Japan in June, I thought this provided a marvelous opportunity to immerse the Bees through homelearning activities on Japan, so that they would be very familiar with the country as we travelled through Japan. It was really fun organising a lesson plan on Japan. I was seriously astounded by the wealth of activities surrounding this theme and learned a lot myself as well! That is truly the beauty of learning at home with our children, isn't it? Not us merely imparting and teaching, but cultivating and nurturing together as a family. 

Featured books

There is a small but impressive collection of books on Japan for children in the library, and we borrowed the following:

A Visit To Japan (this is my favourite - very easy to read with eye-catching facts and large attractive photos that captured the attention of the Bees. Big Bee picked up lots of amazing facts to include into her lapbook, eg Japan has 1,500 earthquakes a year!)

We're From Japan (great for letting the Bees understand the lifestyles of fellow Japanese children)

A-Z Japan (good for teaching the alphabet to Little Bee, while imparting simple concise facts to Big Bee)

Games

A fortnight before we left for Japan, I played pretend games of going to the airport, getting on a plane, stepping into a new country, sitting in a bullet train and checking into a hotel (the whole works!) with Little Bee. From these games, she was able to pick up the concepts of the myriad transportation in Japan - plane, bullet train and bus! We arranged chairs to create a makeshift plane, and Mummy here was the old aunty air stewardess serving children's meal to an eager Little Bee! 

Song and dance

We learned to sing the song Sakura and watched (as well as imitated!) geishas dancing an ancient fan dance online. Little Bee, whose learning style is highly kinesthetic, loved the geisha fan dance, and even sang and danced to Sakura in a shabu shabu restaurant in Kyoto! In fact, she was humming the song all across Japan, and even bought a fan to accessorize her dance!

English - Reading

We learned the letters "Jj" for "Japan" and "jet", as well as "Ff" for "fan". Little Bee can now read "Japan" and "fan". Unfortunately, she was so familiar with the association of "J" with "Japan" that she will refer to all words starting with "J" as "Japan"! 

Big Bee and I created a worksheet for Little Bee to match words that she knows to pictures. Big Bee drew the pictures on the worksheet and Little Bee was thrilled to work on a worksheet that jie jie created!

English - Phonics 

I am not a believer of learning to read by phonics, as phonics merely make up less than 50% of all English words. However, I had been told by Little Bee's teacher to try to imbue phonics reading at home, so here I am, being an obedient mum and trying my best to impart something I do not really believe in. 

So, we worked on the word family of "an" this month (and we are still in the learning process, with Little Bee a wee bit confused!). I chose "an" because we were learning to read "fan", so naturally I made flashcards for "man", "pan", "can" and "ran". I used a different colour to differentiate "an" from the beginning letter to enhance the learning process. 

Mandarin - Reading

Little Bee has more affinity to reading Mandarin words. Perhaps it has to do with her other dominant learning style, of her being a strong visual learner. Mandarin words do not involve any phonics or mental matching of sounds, so I suspect it might be easier for her to look at a Mandarin character as a symbol and utter out the right pronunciation. She has a longer memory tenure for Mandarin words, being able to read more words that she used to learn, compared to English words. 

This month, we learned the Mandarin words "飞机" and "火车" to reinforce the theme of travelling in Japan. She can now read both words independently without needing to refer to the pictures.

Math

I could not think of interesting Math activities for this theme, so Little Bee created a flapbook for numbers 1 to 10. She had great fun creating it with her jie jie! 

Geography

We have a globe map at home, so I took the opportunity to let the Bees identify the locations of Singapore and Japan from the globe. Right before we depart for Japan, both the Bees can confidently point out to where Japan is on the map. Little Bee tended to struggle a fair bit when looking for Singapore though, and I can't blame her! 

I also printed out blank maps for the Bees to colour and identify where Japan is, and for Big Bee to understand the geographical borders (both land and sea) of Japan. We had great fun exploring the globe and I also learned lots of new things, eg Singapore is 5,000 km away from Japan! 

Big Bee's map

Little Bee's map

Big Bee also learned to identify all the Japanese cities she had visited, as well as understood the meaning of the Japanese flag through some reading and research. 

Painting

Japanese flag

Little Bee painted the Japanese flag, so she was always zealously shouting out "Japan flag! Japan flag!" whenever she spotted the Japanese flag as we trudged all across Japan. Back home, my mum - probably with passed-down memories of the Japanese occupation in Singapore - was aghast as to why Little Bee can recognise the Japanese flag and showed such strong enthusiasm in identifying it! 

Cherry blossom tree

Little Bee painted a cherry blossom tree and wrote the word "tree" above the painting. It is wonderful how children can absorb information so much faster if they spent time in the creation process, and this was what happened with Little Bee. 

After this painting session, she would exclaim "cherry blossom tree" whenever we read books about Japan (as it is almost impossible to avoid this ubiquitous emblem of Japanese nature!). Sadly, we did not see any real cherry blossom trees by the time we arrived, although Little Bee was still excitedly identifying cherry blossom trees from those large attractive billboards in Narita airport. 

Japanese woodblock printing

Woodblock printing in Japan was very popular in the 17th to 20th centuries. We replicated this technique using a recycled thin styrofoam fruit box from the supermarket. I cut the styrofoam box into small pieces on which the Bees drew pictures on, using a pen. They then painted the styrofoam pieces and stamped them on a paper - and we produced our very own woodblock prints! 

This craft proved to be rather challenging for Little Bee, as we need to use a delicate balance of restrained strength when carving out pictures and painting them on the styrofoam pieces, so only Big Bee was able to complete this successfully. She loved the end product tremendously, and was immensely fascinated by this painting technique. 

Crafts

Before I started researching on the types of crafts to work on for this theme, I could never guess at the rich variety of divine Japanese crafts that we can work on! I really enjoyed creating these crafts with the Bees so much! 

Japanese family fans

We created these Japanese fans with all our translated Japanese names, and the Bees were thrilled! They were waving and fanning them around, much to my amusement. This is such an easy craft to make, just took us under an hour to create all 4 fans, although I assisted a lot in assembling the ice-cream sticks. Big Bee was able to write her Japanese name independently after only a cursory glance at the computer's translated name. I wrote Little Bee's Japanese name in pencil and got her to trace it out with a black marker. They both enjoyed the process so much! 

Japanese garden

After visiting the ancient 400 year old Nijo Castle in Kyoto, we were somewhat enraptured by the serenity of Japanese gardens. I decided to let the Bees create a Japanese garden, using simple materials like construction papers, egg cartons, toilet paper roll and tiny pebbles that I secretly borrowed from our estate's landscaping!

It was a great team effort by the Bees, and we spent a peaceful afternoon on it. Big Bee drew the cheery orange carp and Little Bee drew ripples on the stream. Both of them laid out the pebbles conscientiously, and Big Bee and I tried our utmost best to make the tree resemble a maple tree, but I think it looked more like a tropical banana tree!! The egg carton was assembled into a mini Japanese pagoda replica, and I thought it was rather realistic! 

After completing the landscaped garden, I created flashcards for the Bees to identify elements of the garden. Little Bee was able to read and identify "tree" and "fish", whereas Big Bee effortlessly matched "pagoda", "bridge" and "river" to their rightful structures on our craft. This was really enjoyable! And I did get some quiet time to myself as they both laid out the pebbles :) 

Japanese paper lanterns

I did a very simple craft with Little Bee to create paper lanterns. We then strung the lanterns over old phosphorous light strands that we brought home from a party, and voila! Hanging Japanese lanterns. I would love to light little candles inside and see these lanterns shimmer and glow with bewitching incandescence. I also taught the "opposite" concept of "big" and "small" as well as "tall" and "short" while working on the craft. Little Bee also learned about patterning when deciding which lanterns to string.

Lapbook

Big Bee created a lapbook on Japan, after we reviewed the abundance of knowledge that she gleaned from this theme, and we truly enjoyed the entire process of shaping this lapbook! 

Field trip

Needless to say, we learned all there is to understand about Japan by traversing throughout the country - getting mired in its highly efficient transport system, attempting to talk to the locals off the beaten tourist track and observing the locals at close range in the many metro rides. 

Enjoying a bowl of cold Japanese jelly noodles at a beautiful hillside Japanese hut with maple trees surrounding us in Kyoto.

Sisterly love on board the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo to Osaka.