Japan is a beautiful, unique country with a vibrant culture. This is one of those places I most want to visit, but since we weren’t able to travel this year a unit study about Japan was the best we could do. Japan is also particularly relevant in fourth grade here in California because the internment camps here on the west coast during World War II are an important piece of California history.

There is obviously zero chance that you will capture an entire country or culture in a unit. We have been doing monthly studies of different countries around the world diving into different aspects. The goal is solely to learn a little about a country or culture different than our own and often to see how they have impacted the world.

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Japanese Food

Read: Magic Ramen: The Story of Momofuku Ando by Andrea Wang

Make: Instant Ramen

Bake: these Green Tea Cookies. We made them for our weekly Poetry Tea Time and we all loved them.

Play: Sushi Go or Sushi Roll

Japanese Poetry

We explored Haiku, a traditional form of Japanese poetry. There are also some wonderful haiku children’s book collections to share with kids. Here are some we have enjoyed:

• Origami & Haiku from the British Museum
• Guyku: a Year of Haiku for Boys by Bob Raczka
• Lion of the Sky: Haiku for all Seasons by Laura Prudie Salas
• Earth Verse by Sally M. Walker

Japanese Art & Music

Fold Origami – there are a lot of guides out there to folding origami. You can find some good ones for kids on YouTube or check out a book. We used this one and a pack of origami paper.

Explore Science and Art with these Giant Wave Paintings inspired by Hokusai’s giant wave painting of a tsunami. This project from Deep Space Sparkle also works on creating depth perception within art.

Learn about Taiko Drumming. We watched YouTube videos about how Taiko drums are created. My kids love taiko drumming and had an opportunity to learn to play them in second grade. We actually did a whole unit on Taiko Drumming – see post.

Japanese Geography

The island of Japan is largely shaped by it’s mountains and volcanoes. Again, the volcanoes are only one aspect of Japan, but learning about volcanoes tied in well with our science unit: Geology.

National Geographic Earth Science Kit. Made and then exploded a volcano. Read about Mount Fuji from our The Good & The Beautiful curriculum.

Watched Brain Pop videos about Volcanoes and another on Tsunamis.

Visited a Japanese Garden. A lot of cities around the US have beautiful Japanese Gardens. We loved this one in San Francisco a couple years ago and our own Balboa Park in San Diego has a lovely Japanese Friendship Garden.

Japanese Internment

This isn’t the happiest bit of California History, or American History, but it is an important part of both and shouldn’t be ignored. We covered Japanese Internment as part of our California History curriculum. It was briefly mentioned in our text, California History for Kids, but I also supplemented it with other resources that I thought brought the experience to life better.

Watch a Brain Pop Video on Pearl Harbor.

Read:

• On the Horizon by Jane Yolen
• Fish for Jimmy by Katie Yamasaki
• Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki
• Write to Me by Cynthia Grady
• They Called Us Enemy by George Takei

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