Hina-matsuri is also known as the Doll Festival. It takes place in Japan every March and celebrates the health and happiness of girls. In this story, Momoko has just moved from Japan to the UK and is struggling with feelings of homesickness, as well as having to get used to the arrival of her new baby brother! To cheer her up, Momoko’s mum suggests getting out her hina dolls early. Momoko soon discovers that the dolls have a life of their own… Suitable for Year 3 to Year 6.

One of the common traditions associated with Setsubun is bean throwing. During mamemaki, dried soya beans are thrown at someone dressed up as an oni (often translated as demon) as a symbolic way of driving away bad luck. In this story, Kanta is an oni boy who lives with his family in a village where they get along with their human neighbours. That is until a new student, Saki, arrives and starts making his life difficult...

New Year, or Oshogatsu, is the most important holiday of the year in Japan. In the run-up to the day, people spend time cleaning their homes, putting up decorations, and writing cards to friends and family. This is a story about a little girl celebrating the New Year in Japan with her family at the same time as dealing with the loss of her beloved pet hamster, Ham.

A kamishibai story about how a young boy and a child koi flag are brought together by chance on Children's Day and learn that families come in all shapes and sizes.   

The Spider’s thread is a well-known story in Japan. It is a moral fable inspired by Buddhist beliefs about good, evil and redemption, written by Ryunosuke Akutagawa and published in 1918. This kamishibai is suitable for KS3 and above. 

In Japan, it is said that a rabbit lives on the moon and this folktale explains how that came to be. This kamishibai can be used to teach about Otsukimi, the autumn moon viewing festival. Visit the O Tsukimi page for more teaching resources.

Otsukimi literally means “Moon Viewing” and is an autumn festival in Japan celebrating the Harvest Moon.

In this lesson, students will explore the impact of different tenses in creative writing by writing prose about their journey to school and editing their own work.

In this lesson, students will learn about the key elements of haiku: that they are seasonal poems which contain a ‘phrase’ and a ‘fragment’. Students will also have a chance to write their own haiku and read it aloud. 

In Lesson 1, students will respond creatively to images of Japan, using sensory language to write a description of a scene and will reflect on the concept of journeys.