Japan: Festivals

I did not do a good job of getting pictures these past few days. We have been doing things, though. Fun things.

For instance, we read the two books featured at the end of this post and talked about several Japanese festivals. My children were especially interested in Boys Day and Girls Day--as I thought they would be. In honor of Girls Day, we colored the below pictured kokeshi dolls. The dolls are tubular but we needed decorations so we attached them to the wall anyway. You can get the coloring page for the dolls here.

Then, to celebrate Boys Day, we made some carp kites. Obviously, both of these activities involved coloring and that is about it--but my kids liked them and I just wasn't up for anything more involved. The website where I found these two activities had many other, more advanced, ideas. Here is that website. And here is the carp kite print-out.

And here are the books:

I am not having good luck with pictures for these books. The above picture is the book Festivals of the World: Japan by Susan McKay, but it will probably be easier to find it from the library call number: X 394.269 M153. The cover doesn't look like the one above. We really liked the book, though, so hopefully you'll be able to find it.

The other book is a Fiesta! book (strange . . .) called Japan: A Portrait of the Country Through It's Festivals and Traditions. No author. The call number is X 394.269 J35. We really liked this book too.