Last year’s 子供の日 (May 5th) happened during Singapore’s Circuit Breaker (4 months lockdown) when I had a hectic schedule teaching online classes and managing Kai and Kei’s learning. As a result, we didn’t celebrate KODOMO NO HI that fully. This year, I am taking this opportunity to document the resources that I found and the activities that I did.
- My first craft with Kei was simple and only involved paper and Washi tape:. This banner was inspired from the Instagram account @birthdayplanner_watako.
2. Kai and I folded origami koi, following the video below. Since I could not find our carp kite that I was hoping I could fly outside this year, I used the origami koi as a prop when we took pictures outside.
I also included a video on making the samurai helmet, and a few pictures from last year and from my good friend’s craft this year:
3. Leading up to Children’s Day, I borrowed a few books from Japanese Association, and also read up on this special day on Twinkl which I am a member of.
Title of Japanese books:
１。かっぱのこいのぼり
２。かえうたかえうたこいのぼり
３。とべとべこいのぼり
４。きんたろう
4. We watched videos that explained about Children’s Day (including the carp fish and 金太郎) in Chinese, English and Japanese.
In the end, we learned many new things about what KODOMO NO HI is all about, and Kai wrote a story of Kintaro:
5. Finally, since Kai and Kei’s Japanese school will be also celebration Children’s Day, I was asked to prepare bento boxes for them this week. Here is one that I made 2 years ago
I am grateful that there is an abundance of electronic and print resources to support our multi-lingual and multi-cultural parenting journey. Because of this, I can talk about Children’s Day and other important cultural celebrations in the languages that my children are learning.
Although the resources that I found are not presented identically in each language, “parallel texts” or, text that has the same content in different languages, is a great tool in supporting vocabulary and language learning.
Kai learned the equivalence of these Japanese terms in English and Chinese:
きんたろう = 金太郎 (jin tai lang). = The Golden Boy
おの = 斧头 （futou) = ax
カブト = 头盔 (tou kui) = military helmet
You can read more about the use of parallel text here:
Ms Claudia Lee Kimura 