Our Week Ending 9/25/08

We spent much of our homeschooling week discussing, reading, and learning about Japan. We're gearing up for JapanFest this weekend.

We read a simplified version of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, which forced me to explain (in first grade terms) the atomic bomb and what war is. Although, Casey and I have discussed war before, in the context of her three uncles proudly serving our country in Iraq (all 3 were there at the same time for a brief period). This time was a bit different though because the title character dies in the book. But, to make it not seem so sad, we went to YouTube and watched some video of children singing at the Sadako memorial (which is beautiful, by the way).

We also read several other books about Japan - books about the culture, clothing, government, food, etc.; and also listened to some traditional and popular music from Japan.

And the crowning achievement of our week: the Lap Book...

In bottom left-hand corner is Casey's name in Japanese. I found the translation here. From a similar translation website, I found the characters to print Japan - A Lap Book. Casey supplied the rest of the artwork on the cover. She found pictures she liked in Japan ABCs by Sarah Heiman.


Many of these templates came from these sources:

My Japanese Counting Book
The Japan Book in the center is from Enchanted Learning.


Map of Japan
Alphabet - the characters at this site are in the Alphabet flap
Japan Shutterfold Map
And many other generic country templates can be found at HomeschoolShare.com.



The back cover is from Enchanted Learning.


We had so much fun this week studying Japan!