Create a Book

While our Japanese tutor was having a holiday back home in Japan for the last three weeks Z and I were supposed to be learning some adjectives and verbs.

For the adjectives I decided to make a rhyming book. I wrote things like "San has an ookii (big) house". and "Han has a chiisai (small) mouse." I also drew little pictures, like San's ureshii (happy) cat and Han's kanashii (sad) bat. I amused myself with the goofy pictures and how Han continually got the short end of the stick. Z helped by coloring in the pictures.

It wasn't all that clever. But I was able to write it and draw it in less than 15 minutes and it covered the sixteen adjectives we needed to learn.

Now Z has always been good at memorizing, especially songs or rhymes. So I think she had the "book" committed to memory after reading it half a dozen times.


Then it was on to the verbs. We had a lot more verbs to learn, like three times as many. At first I thought I wanted to be more clever so I made a Japanese Verb Charades Game. I admit I loved charades as a kid (okay I still think it is fun) I used to play it all the time with my best friends. We would make up really absurd things to act out and fall into fits of giggles. My favorite was trying to act out an amoeba. Go ahead, try it. I dare you. *giggles*

So, while JVCG was a hit, Z and I got more caught up in acting than remembering which Japanese word they corresponded to. So today I made a matching game. I again drew silly manga-esque pictures, this time about a boy named Haku, who "rode" his bike, "chatted" with friends "drank", "ate", "swam" (of course not too soon after eating), got into a "fight" and more.

Then I used bribery. No wait, it wasn't bribery. I've read Alfie Kohn! It was something much more reasonable and educational. Maybe I was teaching economics... Anyway I told Z that for every match she got right on the first try she would get a dime. She could get a nickel for a second try match and a penny for a third try match. At the end of her turn she had made $0.88. (then we went to the market and she bought some peanut M&M's, originally she wanted a crosswords puzzle book but it was $4.00!!)

But I realized that the original book idea that I used with the adjectives worked better. So I took Haku and his "action words" and made up a story about them. It is kind of a cool idea actually. I just have the picture of what he is doing and the word in Japanese. I put them in a certain order and then used a whole punch and some ribbon to make a book out of it. There is no plot to the book though. So each time you can make up a different plot. The first time Haku met some friends for tea and a chat and then Haku went to school. The second time he met some strangers who "chatted him up" and offered him some refreshments if he would proof read their new book. :)

Z really liked it and wanted me to make up more and more new stories. She made up one of her own too. And each time we read it we said the Japanese verbs. When we went to our Japanese lesson today (yay! our sensei is back!) our tutor said that we were doing well.

I am looking forward to making more books like this. I only used 1/3 of the verbs we need to learn in this first book so we have more to do. And I am pleased that I have found a good method for Z to learn her Japanese. I know that if I put the words to song she would learn even better, but I am just a writer, not a song writer.


Speaking of songs our Japanese tutor brought us back some cool gifts from Japan, including a CD of children's music. I had been looking for something like this to help Z with her pronunciation and to get her familiar with the sound of spoken Japanese. I am really excited to listen to it. Usually I play music in the morning while we eat breakfast, often Jose Luis Orozco, or Bluegrass, sometimes Mozart or Green Day. I am looking forward to hearing this music, from the cover art I feel it will be super cute!

Speaking of super cute... our tutor also brought back an activity book (Z loves activity books - remember that is the one thing she chose to buy from the American Girl store) about the most popular girl's anime in Japan right now Precure. Those anime girl pictures I drew a couple days ago were from Precure. Pere is trying to get a hold of a video of it for us so we can see what it is all about.