Children's Day is a beloved Japanese holiday with many colorful and engaging traditions. On this national holiday celebrated yearly on May 5, children are honored for their strengths and given good wishes for happiness. Your younger...

Bring the excitement and beauty of Japanese festivals into your classroom. Kids with special needs create calendars that reflect special festivals and holidays common to Japanese culture. They start the project by creating a list of...

Students listen to the story "A Carp for Kimiko" and discuss its lesson and theme. They design and create their own carp kite in celebration of Children's Day. They discuss gender discrimination and how that makes them feel.

Scholars find out how the government used propaganda to mobilize children to help in the war effort. Lesson exercises include analyzing a quote from Franklin Roosevelt, viewing propaganda images and posters, and participating in a lively...

Study the three writing systems of Japanese: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. Your middle schoolers will practice writing Kanji and write a mini story in English which uses at least 10 of the Kanji in the place of the English words....

Students explore the concept of Japanese internment. In this Japanese internment lesson, students examine primary sources that enable them to discover what internment camp life was like and its implications, Students write their own...

The Cleveland Museum of Art presents this interdisciplinary model unit that asks class members to explore how the same themes are presented in the folktales and art of several cultures.

Students examine fairness in relation to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. In this equality lesson, students watch a video "Rabbit in the Moon" and discuss what happened to the Japanese Americans during WWII. Students...

Students study Japanese American internment camps. In this American history instructional activity, students compare and contrast the camp internees' experiences with with team sports-related challenges students have encountered....

Students listen to the story A Carp for Kimiko and discuss its theme/lesson. Then they identify and are introduced to the Japanese holiday, Children's Day, formerly known as Boy's Day. Students also design and create their own carp kite....

In this Valentine's Day worksheet, pupils will learn about Valentine's Day traditions in America. Students will learn Valentine's Day vocabulary and then practice a dialogue about Valentine's Day. Pupils will write a letter to a...

Learners identify that Japanese folktales reveal information about Japanese history, life, and customs. Students identify and interpret the work kamishibai, paper play and explain that in Japanese folktales are told through a series of...

Third graders explore their culture in comparison to Japanese culture by reading the book, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. They identify islands of Japan, create a Venn diagram comparing Japanese culture to American culture, and...

Students examine Japanese culture. In this multicultural instructional activity, students taste rice crackers and create Japanese fans from paper and paint.

Students discover how New Year's Day is celebrated in Japan. In groups, they create their own versions of Japanese kites using materials available to them in the classroom. They discover the signifigance of the kites to their culture and...

Students explore the Japanese culture and literature through various learning centers. They compare and contrast story details in two stories and complete a Venn diagram. After comparing the stories, they rotate to different centers and...

Students study Japanese folkart traditions and culture through storytelling, class discussions, and a creative project. The project involves students creating drawings of a pre-selected folktale and putting them together in a class book.

Students investigate the importnce of celebrations anf festivals in Japanese culture and then create a story based upon an image from the lesson. Resource links are provided for images of events.

Students make deductions about life in an internment camp by reading and comparing letters written to Clara Breed. Along the way, they consider the advantages of looking at a historical event from the multiple points of view of...

Sixth graders read Under the Blood Red Sun (UBRS), V is for Victory (V), and Number the Stars(NS). They examine WWII through the eyes of Japanese, Danish, and American students and complete at least two projects: a radio broadcast and a...

Students practice descriptive writing by viewing auto-portraits of young children.  In this art analysis lesson, students examine an auto-portrait of their teacher as a young child and ask him/her questions about their youth....

Pupils explore Japan. In this Japanese culture lesson, students listen to stories regarding Japan, view Japanese art, learn Japanese words, and make Origami.

Learners read and translate a 19th-century American ghost tale into a Japanese hanging scroll in this exciting lesson for middle-level Language Art classes. The lesson can be completed in four or five days.

Sixth graders read the books, The Invisible Thread: An Autobiography by Yoshiko Uchida and Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki about Japanese Americans during World War II. They hold discussions, take quizzes, and write essays about the...