Hinamatsuri poster. Hina dolls illustration from fumira.jp.
Hinamatsuri (ひなまつり), or Girls Day, is just around the corner (it is always on March 3rd!). We can’t afford a nice Hina Ningyou/Dolls set (nor do we have room for one), so I designed and printed up an 8×10″ poster to display in our living room to remind us of this Japanese holiday. I just googled “free Hinamatsuri image”, then added text to my favorite image using Picmonkey.com to create my poster. You could also do the same thing using Photoshop.
I’ve blogged about Hinamatsuri activities to do with your children many times in the past. Click HERE for all my past posts about Hinamatsuri/Girls Day.
I’ve also been pinning cute Hinamatsuri ideas on Pinterest. Click HERE to view my Hinamatsuri Pinterest page!
I hope those links will help get you prepared to celebrate this popular holiday. What will you be doing to celebrate?
あけましておめでとうございます！How did you spend your New Years? My children and I ate mochi, played karuta, and watched a little bit of 紅白歌合戦 (Kouhaku Uta Gassen).
One of my daughter’s first homework assignments from Japanese School this year is to complete a worksheet about the 十二支／じゅうにし(Jyuunishi). This is something that I’ve never thought to teach her and something I don’t know too much about either. So of course I used the internet to look for the best resources to teach my daughter about the Jyuunishi.
I think I will begin by showing her a video of the story behind the jyuunishi animals. Here are a few of the best ones on YouTube (I love the 日本むかし話/Nihon Mukashi Banashi series!):
I also downloaded the story of the Jyuunishi on my iTouch for 99 cents via the “Koehon” app (for iPhone and iPad). If you don’t already have this app, I highly recommend it! The app itself is free. Once you download the app, you will have access to 250+ picture books, most of them Japanese!! This is a pretty huge deal, if you ask me, since paper copies of Japanese children’s books are not readily available in the U.S. Most of the stories are only 99 cents. You can either read the text yourself or listen to a pre-recording. Visit the official Japanese Koehon website HERE. (BTW, there are LOTS of NEW, great Japanese apps for kids now. I will do a separate post on those later.)
If you don’t have an iPod/iPad, you can visit Xuite’s website to listen to the story of the jyunishi (in Japanese) then print off the provided worksheet to complete.
Here’s another video to help you remember the order of the animals:
Then I will help my kids figure out what animal year they were born in, and read to them their “personality traits”. You can find those HERE and HERE (this website has a fun animal-matching flash game at the bottom).
Then, I will teach them that 2013 is the year of the SNAKE(へび). We might color one of the snake coloring pages by happylilac.net. My daughter made paper plate snakes (instructions HERE at “Crafts and Art for Children) at Japanese School.
If you have any other ideas, please share!
(You can read more about Jyuunishi on Wikipedia, HERE. It is basically the same thing as the Chinese Zodiac Calendar).
“Ready Steady NihonGo!” is another wonderful Japanese-learning/teaching resource by the Japan Society. The website provides ten 45-minute lesson plans for introducing children to the Japanese language and culture. The lessons are fun and interactive… it makes me want to be a Japanese Teacher! Each lesson includes printable flashcards and sample dialogue.
Here’s a description of this program from the Ready Steady NihonGo! website:
*****
Ready Steady NihonGO! has been carefully structured to tie in with
the National Curriculum Objectives for KS2 Modern Foreign
Languages. These aims are all clearly stated in the initial summary
and also at the start of each lesson plan. Curriculum links to other
subject areas are also listed, thus making Ready Steady NihonGO!
a complete and relevant unit of work in any upper primary classroom.
*
Ready Steady NihonGO! also ties in with the latest ‘Oracy’,
‘Intercultural Understanding’ and ‘Knowledge about Language’
learning objectives as stated within the Key Stage Two Framework
for Modern Foreign Languages (autumn 2005). Points of particular
relevance include the following:
*
• providing children with the opportunity to imitate and play with the
sounds and sound patterns of the target language
• asking and answering questions on a range of topics
• learning about the cultural traditions, celebrations and literature of
countries where the target language is spoken and making
comparisons with their own
• recognising the language (Japanese) uses a different writing
system, has different ways of expressing social relationships and
borrows words from other languages
*
Targets discussed within the new ‘Languages Ladder’ can also be
applied to Ready Steady NihonGO! and any child who completes
the ten week course can be expected to show progress up the rungs.
Foundation stones in language awareness will also have been laid
and these will support any future study of Japanese.
*****
If you are a parent teaching your children Japanese or a Japanese Teacher looking for a wonderful resource, please check out Ready Steady NihonGo! You’ll be glad you did!
Dorilu.net is a website where you can customize and print various drills for learning in Japanese (all free!) . There are drills for math, Japanese language (mostly kanji practice), geography, and English. You can even search for drills by grade level (1st~6th grade).
Looking at these drills makes me nervous for my daughter to enter elementary school. Some of these worksheets are very difficult!
There seems to be no lack of wonderful websites for learning Japanese geared toward children these days. I love it!! It was just a few years ago when I would scour the internet for resources and could never find anything good. We are blessed in this digital age to have all these resources at our fingertips.
image from brother.co.jp
The website I want to highlight today is brother.co.jp. Their “free downloads” section has wonderful printables, including hiragana and katana worksheets, papercrafts, BOOKS, etc. I want to print off their free books onto cardstock and have them bound for my kids. Their hiragana/katakana worksheets are beautifully done too. Thank you, brother!
Today I have another great website for you to check out: おべんきょう.com! It has great printable worksheets to practice writing hiragana and katakana, numbers, telling time, etc! It also has printable flashcards and hiragana/katakana charts. I thought it was really clever of them to use hiragana as their web address :)
This hiragana-learning website, Aiuebu/あいうえぶ (by S5-Style) has been designed for children ages 3 and up. The purpose of the site is to provide children with a fun and cute way to practice reading and writing their hiragana. I have to say… it sure is cute! I think it would only be better if it would pronounce each kana and word for you when you click on it. It looks like they are adding more words daily.
We are having an awesome summer! Swimming, picking strawberries, playing with friends, soccer, trying new veggies from the CSA… each day seems to FLY by. I am sorry I have not been posting as frequently this month. I also apologize for being slow in replying to comments and emails. Our life is busy, busy, busy!
A game that my daughter and I enjoy playing is Shiritori. It is a very popular Japanese word game. What I love about this game is that almost anyone of any age and skill level can play this game, and it doesn’t require anything but your brain! It is a great way to learn/review vocabulary. We like to play this game while driving in the car.
This is the simple way to play the game:
1) One person begins by saying a Japanese word (usually a noun).
2) The next person has to say a word that begins with the last kana of the previous word.
3) Next person does the same as #2. You keep taking turns thinking of a word that begins with the last kana of the previus word.
4) Words cannot be used more than once.
5) If you say a word that ends with “ん”, you lose!
Here is an example:
たいや–> やま–> まくら–> らいおん(oops, you lose!)
There are other variations to the game to make it harder. You can read more about Shiritori Rules HERE (wikipedia).
And HERE are some printable shiritori games (happylilac.net).
You can watch a video of us playing Shiritori at the top of this post. My 4-year old is better at this game than I am! I challenge you to play this game with someone today :).
Don’t forget this Friday, February 3rd is a Japanese holiday called Setsubun. I posted about Setsubun last year HERE and HERE (click to see lots of fun activities and printables!). It is a great way to chase out evil and invite happiness into your home for 2012! (If you are eating eho-maki, the direction to face this year is north-north-west).
New for this year: Enjoytokyo.jp has cute printable oni masks HERE. I especially like this disco-oni!
image from enjoytokyo.jp
Who usually ends up playing the part of “oni” in your family? In ours, we all take turns. And instead of throwing beans, we throw mini marshmallows… less chance of someone getting hurt!
A few weeks ago when I was searching for a cute printable chore chart for my 3-year old, I came across an adorable website called “Creative Mamma.” Not only does she have free printable/customizable chore charts like this:
