Konnichiwa! And welcome to our world geography unit on Japan. We’re having a great time as we travel through Asia with our Expedition Earth Geography Curriculum! I’m so glad I took the time to get it all together, it’s really paying off and the kids are having a great time learning about our world!
Here are some more of the things we learned about this week:
- Completed our Mapping Worksheet
- We learned about oceans this week as part of our ecosystem study
- Learned the Japan song
- Prayed for the people of Japan
- Learned how to say hello in Japanese
- Learned about the flag and colored our worksheet
- Learned about Children in Japan
- Made Colorful Carp, Karesansui Mini Sand Gardens, origami & the Itsukushima Torii Shrine
- Completed our Japan Lapbook component
- Enjoyed an evening out to sushi!
- And Stamped our passports!
Of course we stamped our passports and greeted each other!
I’ve found it useful to review all the continents and oceans daily, then we review all of the countries for the continent, this might not work as well once we’re on country 31, but for now each day we’ll review the countries for Asia: China, S. Korea, and Japan. And yes, my preschooler is doing it!
We studied our animals of Japan when they were done writing all the fact sentences they each picked their favorite animal to show you:
After that we classified our animals, I did some re-organization of our wall to make room for the over abundance of mammals! I hope they all fit on the wall, after looking at it closer, I doubt they will, I’m going to have to enlarge it at some point considering there are 186 animals in the unit! If you missed the animal supplement, make sure to click here to get it!
We made origami, the blue one is a pig, the red one is a carp fish, and the green one is a pelican, you know… incase you were curious ;o)
We learned about the Itsukushima Torii Shrine, then made our own out of play-doh!
We worked on our lapbook components for Japan:
We made Japanese Karesansui Mini Sand Gardens:
Here is the Teeny tot “becoming one with the sand.”
We made colorful carp necklaces from A Trip Around the World.
Of course we ended our week with a night out to sushi! We were thankful to find a place that offered one of the rooms where you sit on the floor. It was a bit hard controlling the Teeny Tot in this environment, but everyone seemed to have a great time!
Click here if you’d like to follow along with our Expedition Earth Geography Curriculum Journey!
Oh how I love this post! We live in Japan. Okinawa, actually, which is a little different than mainland….more of a slower moving tropical island. Still a million people though on 450 square miles! Thank you for praying for the Japanese. They are very much into some aspects of Shintoism, Buddhism, and also a lot of ancestor worship. They just had a festival here where they drum and dance in the streets late at night to welcome their dead ancestors back from the dead. They believe they stay here for a few days. Then they dance and drum them back home.
We love living here, but they do need Jesus. It’s always nice to stumble upon a church with a cross on it. 🙂
Hello Amy, nice, we’ll do pray. I’m writing back to your post because as funy as it seems I met with Japenese girls while studying ESL in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada back in the 90, then all students left and went back home. One of the Japenese sent me two mails and I still have one today which I kept because it was a gift, a little frame. Back then, did not mean much to me. 5 years ago I gave my life to Jesus. I recently moved to Ontario Canada from Quebec and in my boxes I found that letter I always kept. I stop and reread the letter which was a christmas postcard. I was supprise how it sounded christian, talked about Jesus and the frame means something about God’s love. I will probably never know if she is a christian but I hope and I am praying for her and along your request for the country! Wanted to share! Julie, Ontario, Canada.
Seems like a great lesson! I love Japan and its culture. And that paper Buta looks cute! Did you try making a senbazuru? Maybe you could make it a mini competition, where each child makes a different colored paper crane.
Where did you get the map?