January- learning about JAPAN ( wrap-up)

The whole of our January was dedicated to learning about JAPAN. It was really great and interesting. D. fell in love with this country and hopefully one day our dream to visit it will come true.
We did lots of fun activities, read plenty of books, learned lots of new things, there's a lot that we couldn't fit in so looking forward to returning to our "japanese adventures" soon.

Our activities this month can be found here
Here is the wrap-up post in which I'll put together books and links that I found helpful.

Movies: 
Satoyama: Japan's Secret Water Garden (TV 2004)


Books:
Full list of books here

Anya's bookshelf: children-books-japan




More of Anya's books »

Activities:
 Learn about Japan- tons of activities

Asian crafts
Japanese crafts at Crafty crow
Japanese crafts at The crafty classroom
Kids Web Japan
Pastel kimono from Art Projects for Kids
Japanese art lesson plans from Smithsonian

Art of Japan lessons
Japanese art for elementary, lessons
New Year in Japan

Learning about JAPAN: Japanese landscape art

It's all about Japan this last week in our house.
Today we looked through the book of Hiroshige prints and paintings.

We talked how there are recurring themes in pretty much every picture- trees, mount Fuji, rivers and sea (water), sunset, people. We talked how love and admiration of nature is an important part of Japanese culture. We also noticed that on these pictures colors weren't bright, nor were they even.

Then we attempted to create our own Japanese landscapes.
There are very good ideas at Smithsonian Education web site regarding teaching Art of Japan.
A few days ago I saw a lovely idea how to make pretty colors with markers and water at Deep Space Sparkle  and I figured it would be a great way to create these beautiful uneven colors.

First we drew our large shapes- hills, sea, volcano. We added extra color at the edges and some waves to the sea and pink clouds in the sky. Then we added small details- houses and  trees. We grabbed our paintbrushes and water and "washed" our paper. It was so much fun and running colors created a lovely effect. D. was delighted. It also good that we used several shades of the same color- it added to the overall prettiness. We did not "wash" small details, only large ones for fear that it's just going to be messy, so after our paintings dried up we finished coloring houses with regular markers.

D.'s finished painting

Learning about JAPAN: origami photo frame tutorial

We talked a little bit about origami, we tried to make something, but it proved to be a little bit too difficult for D. just yet, so we decided to come back to it later. However we made a pretty photo frame using origami paper. I saw an idea for it  at The Crafty Classroom.

Materials:

• wide wooden photo frame (I found it cheap at Michaels) 
• mod podge and brushes
• four rectangles of origami paper
• rick rack for additional decoration (optional)
• glue gun (optional)

1. Spread mod podge all over the photo frame.

 

 2. Put origami paper rectangles on the photo frame and allign. Tuck extra paper to the back of the frame and secure with scotch tape.

3. Apply another layer of mod podge all over the paper.

4. Let dry and decorate with rick rack if desired (we hot glued them on to hide some imperfections :) D. also added a little butterfly) Insert your favorite masterpiece (in our case Ponyo) and voila:)

something borrowed

We had another quiet week end, the highlight of which was a visit from D.'s best friend. We did a little art activity together. It was a bit messy, lots of "ew"-ing in the process, but easy and with great results. We will try and organize "create together" sessions every week now.
Thanks to the lovely blogs out there we are never short of ideas :)

Our first activity was borrowed from  Smart Art Class
 Marbleizing with Shaving cream  
  It was easy and fun, we have lots of pretty paper scraps now as kids wanted to try all the colors :)
D.'s best masterpiece :

Our second activity, Crazy Crayons comes from  Frugal Family Fun Blog. These turned out pretty great (even though yours truly misread instructions somehow and set oven to 400 F o_O , which in turn resulted in a lot of stinky smoke, it did not however affected crayons at all). Kids were absolutely delighted.

So here it is, ready to rock another week. Lots of work preparing lessons for me, since I will have to go back to work again, we are going to wrap up our Japan activities, also some outings are planned and I hope they will happen.

Learning about JAPAN- printmaking tutorial

Today we talked a little bit about woodblock printing and tried to make some prints at home. The idea for this craft came from the book Hands-on Asia.
1. We took a thick foam sheet and cut it in four. On each part we drew a design (something very simple).

2. Trace the design with a chopstick pressing hard, but not puncturing the sheet. It can be challenging for little hands I must say, but after a while D. got a hang of it.

 

3. Pick colors and spread generous amount of paint over design. (We used Clementine paints which are not too bright when they dry up, they also have earthy tones perfect for our nature inspired designs).

4. Put a sheet of paper over the design and rub all over.

5. Peel the paper off and voila.

In the end of the day we read  Look What Came from Japan by Miles Harvey.

It was an ok book, some information is outdated (VHS and walkman, tamagochi as well), but it reminded us about japanese things we read about before- sushi, pottery, arts etc.

yet another mobile

We love love love making mobiles, and a wine rack on the ceiling of my kitchen is the perfect excuse to make things to hang.
So here we go again, this time inspired by the star mobile that Gardenmama made a few days ago.
We went about it a little different- painted card stock and cut out different shapes (traced cookie cutters and come up with our usual heart and birdies :)). After that we  covered our shapes in glitter and glued them together with a  a little bead added to each piece of string. We tied it all to the wreath that we got in a craft store.

Learning about JAPAN- kimono

Today D. was at co-op all day and wasn't up to anything serious after. So we learned a little about kimono. 
Tons of information can be found here. We looked at several styles and discussed how it is a traditional dress in Japan. We talked how kimono is a work of art and did a little project:

First we drew an outline of the kimono : a rectangle, two squares to represent sleeves and couple of triangles. Then we traced the outline with blue crayon (D. decided it will be of blue silk) and added a collar in gold crayon.
D. drew a "scenery" all over the kimono and we colored it with watercolors. After design dried a little bit he painted the rest of the kimono blue (for that occasion I broke my favorite metallic watercolors to give it silkier look).

Finally we added purple background, cut kimono out and pasted it over black construction paper sheet.

Lots of fun.

Work in progress

Been working on it for a while, one day it will be finished...I hope :D

Somewhat lazy Monday

Not working too hard today for sure.
We even changed our regular routine. Granted D. is a kindergartner so there's not too much pressure to keep up with "schoolwork".
We are skipping writing practice worksheets because D. just acquired some pen pals (kids of my friends from a message board)   for both languages and he was busy composing some notes. He managed pretty fine for his age and level I think. And he packed letters in envelopes before I was able to get a camera in my hands.
I didn't expect his English writing be this good, he really made progress. I think this game helped a lot

he's been crazy about it lately and it sure pays off.
***
We also learned a little bit about senses today, especially sense of touch. We did a simple experiment:
I hid some toys with different textures in a sack and D. had to touch them and guess what they were. Then he had to try and do it again this time with gloves on his hands.

The second part of this experiment was to cover his eyes with thick scarf and guide him around the house. I made him touch different things- banister (metal), couch (leather), cat (warm fur), stuffed animal (man made fur), dishwasher (cool plastic), sink (ceramic), dinner table (wood)- he had the most fun with this one I think :) We had to repeat it and this time he had to guess which toy he was handled and whose hand he touched (baby C.- tiny soft hands, mom- big coarser hands).

We had another decent snowfall yesterday and it's a magic winter realm outside.

We even had a visit from a little neighbor:)

January -keep learning about Japan

D. and I keep learning about Japan this month.

Today we read the book My Japan by Etsuko Watanabe.

 

It's a great book for introducing kids to culture of Japan, it talks about food, holidays, clothing. In the end it talks a little bit about hieroglyphs which gave us an opportunity to practice these as well.

We painted Sakura tree an idea for which I found  here.

The other day we watched  "Little travelers:Japan" dvd which we took from the library. It was interesting for D. and he learned a lot.

We keep looking at the map and finding new cities, grandma visited Japan 20 years ago and she's eager to share her memories as well. I have lots of activities planned out I only hope we will be able to squeeze them all in :D

Stamps

My husband inherited something very special from his grandfather- two albums of postal stamps . His grandpa collected them for a long time and some stamps are indeed very old. There are different themes and  he had quite a few foreign stamps-lots from Easter Europe, Cuba. Most of the stamps are from his own country, country that no longer exists. And among all these stamps I came across  one from USA, it looks old and battered. I can only imagine how hard it must have been to get one, giving the fact that grandpa lived behind the iron curtain. I felt very sharply our own blessing of being free to travel now, to exchange letters with virtually anyone in the world...
We decided to keep this collection going, I got couple of books from the library to introduce D. to the world of stamps collecting (and  learn it myself) and  finally signed up for postcrossing (which I'm really excited about).
Few gems from grandpa Misha's collection:

itchy fingers :)

We started our second semester today officially, it went much better than I thought, D. did all his work without whining or trying to put it off. He's really looking forward to going back to his clay class and co-op as well.

Unfortunately C. is sick with fever again and it's a bummer, because she's ten times more needy and some of the fun stuff had to be postponed.

After an unproductive December I felt an urge to make something. And this little ipod case was the result. Cat in headphones (modeled after my mom's cat) is needle felted on the scrap of hubby's old sweater (previously seen in owl bag).

January- Learning about Japan

We are going to learn about Japan this month and today we had a first little glimpse at this beautiful and incredibly interesting country.

Just as we did when we learned about Italy in November we found Japan  and its capital Tokyo on the map and made a card with pictures that we cut out from National Geographic magazines. We also pasted a map of Japan and colored the flag. There is still plenty of room left so I'm going to post it when we're done filling it :)


We read a lovely Japanese story "Buying mittens" by Nankichi Niimi. Such a sweet story, truly perfect for a winter evening. Illustrations by Kuroi Ken are gorgeous.

We saw a beautiful documentary called Satoyama: Japan's Secret Water Garden (2004) , it was very interesting  it talked about this  beautiful region and its inhabitants, it also showed a quiet peaceful life, simple and steady, something that I wish we had more of.


It's available on youtube:









It reminded me of the movie that I really liked River of first love (Amemasu no kawa) (2004), sweet story of childhood friendship and love.