This week my unit study focuses on Japan. By studying about a foreign country you will be teaching your child social studies, history, math, computer skills and geography. He will also learn about the fascinating differences between cultures.
I’ve chosen Japan because most of our subscribers and visitors are from the United States and Japan’s culture is so different than ours.
So let’s go on a trip to Japan together without leaving our homes!
STORIES ABOUT JAPAN
Skills taught: reading, spelling, social studies
As in my past unit studies, we’ll start by reading some books. If you live near a library, you could spend some time there looking for children’s books about Japan. Or if are just looking over this unit study and plan on using it next week or so, you could go to Swaptree, which is a website you can join to trade books with people around the country. You end up only paying around $3.00 in shipping costs, and get rid of your old books at the same time.
Or you might want to take a look at a few of these books having to do with Japan, which you can order from Amazon. I especially like the last one since it’s a fun and interesting way to teach kids about all the products, food and other items that come from Japan:
On the other hand, if you want to get started right away, here are links to three stories which focus on Japan. Two of the stories are very short, so you can probably read through all three of them. Have your child read one or two of the stories to you. Then read the remaining story or stories to him.
When he makes a mistake on a word, write down the word on a pad or sheet of paper, so you can save it for spelling practice by means of physical games and exercises, which we’ll do in a couple of weeks.
If he only mispronounces a few words, it is best to have him try to sound them out. If you automatically tell him the right way to say it, his brain will get lazy and every time he sees a hard word, he’ll just mumble it, knowing that you’ll jump in. Or he’ll just wait for you to say it. However, if there are too many words like this and he has to sound out words in every sentence, he won’t enjoy the reading experience. In that case, have him sound out the words you think are somewhat easier, and read the difficult ones for him. Simply say "I’ll read this word" for some of words, or "try sounding this one out" for other words. There’s a balance you need to reach here between teaching him to not be mentally lazy and making sure he doesn’t become exasperated.
OK, enough instruction on how to do it….here are the books you can read online for free:
The Face in the Barrel (fairy tale)
PLANNING A TRIP TO JAPAN!
Skills taught: geography, computer/Internet use and math
This section will be both fun and educational. Your child will learn how to book a flight online and learn more about time and distance.
Get out your globe or world map if you have one or go to this online world map . Show your child where you live on the map and then show him were Japan is.
Now you’ll help your child to get an idea of how far they would have to travel to get to Japan and how long it would take. Go to this online City Distance Calculator and type in the town where you live or the city that is closest to where you live. If you don’t have a large computer monitor, you may need to scroll down in order to see the red NEXT button. After confirming the two cities, click on the FIND DISTANCE button. You’ll now see the distance in miles and kilometers "as the crow flies". Explain that this expression means that the distance shown is the number of miles if you could travel there in a straight line. However, even airplanes don’t travel in a completely straight line, and they often make a stop or two in other cities or countries, so the distance one would have to travel would actually be longer than what was calculated.
Go to Travelocity (an online travel website). You’ll see a box like the one below. Have your child type in the name of the city closest to where you live in the From box and "Tokyo" in the To box.
Click on the Flexible dates option so that you don’t have to pick exact travel dates and then click on the Search Flights button.
Select one of the trips it offers. Don’t worry, you’re not actually booking the trip.
You will also have to pick a departure and return date. This is a good time to improve your child’s skills at using a calendar. Pick one of the dates that is marked in blue, as in the picture to the right, that you would start your trip if you were to go. Then click on the return date.
After choosing your return date, you must select your departure flight. Then you’ll see a screen like this…
…which shows your chosen departure date and gives you choices for your return flight. All of this might seem like a lot of tedious steps, especially for a kid with ADD, but if you’ve booked flights online before then you know that this goes rather quickly. But make don’t just click away. Instead, have your child do the clicking and explain to him what he is doing with each step. Have him practice reading names of places and times.
Now here’s where the math comes in:
Formulate some subtraction equations based on the start and stop times of each leg of each flight. Depending on the age and ability of your child, you might ask him to come up with the subtraction problems based on the scheduling info.
Next, figure out how many miles away you live from the airport, perhaps by using Mapquest. Then create a division problem to figure out how long it should take to get to the airport.
In order to help your child understand how long a certain number of hours are, use an example of somewhere relatively far from where you that you travel to on occasion. For example, from where we live in North Carolina it is 6928 miles to get to Japan. We go back and forth to New York from time to time, so I explain to Steven that to travel to NY it takes us 12 hours and it is about 620 miles. Then I make him figure out how many times it would take us to go back and forth over and over from NY to NC to equal 6928miles. He then figures out how many hours it would take. It makes him realize how far Japan is from the U.S. and how long it would take to get there if we had to travel to Tokyo by car.
You could also compare something he does regularly to the amount of hours it would take to travel to Japan. For example, you might explain how on certain days he gets up in the morning, has breakfast, homeschools, plays, eats lunch, etc., and during all that time and on through evening he would still be traveling to Japan had he started the trip in the morning. Having something to compare it to makes a big difference in helping a child to relate to time and distance.
If anyone actually gets so enthused by this that you plan a trip to Tokyo let us all know!
LEARNING ABOUT THE JAPANESE PEOPLE
Skills taught: social studies, inter-racial understanding
Explain to your child that differences between cultures are fun and fascinating. Start him early on being interested in people, not just things.
You can start with the way Japanese people look. Go to the Japan Window web site. Make sure to scroll down in order to see the pictures. It’s a nice site because it shows kids playing just like our kids do, showing that although we are all different, we’re a lot alike, too. Explain that the Japanese people have wonderful black straight hair and their eyes are shaped different than ours. Show him a picture of himself and make him pick out the differences. Point out that although they are different than us in ways, the differences between races and nationalities are what makes for variety and beauty.
Now talk to him about the way we understand each other and our language. Depending upon his age, he might understand this concept already. If not, explain how Japanese people talk to each other and understand each other even though when we listen to them we don’t know what they are saying. Explain that we also write differently.
If your child is very young ask him say his alphabet and then say the alphabet song. Even if he is not very young, take him to this alphabet song in Japanese:
….which also shows how Japanese letters are written. Have him write one or two (or more if he enjoys it) on the white board. Explain that is how they always write and to them our writing seems weird and difficult.
Take him to this Japanese Beauty web page. It has pictures of Japanese houses, formal clothes, instruments, cities, and landscape. When your child gets bored looking at the pictures move on.
Next, show him a video about traditional Japanese music and dance . This video is a little long, but watch it for a bit and ask him how it is different from music and dance that he has listened to or watched:
NEXT WEEK’S UNIT STUDY
Next week we are going to continue with the Japanese theme and study Japanese sports, food, and history. And we’ll finish with something we call international night.
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