Poetry Tea Time - Japanese Themed!

Its been awhile since I shared our last Poetry Tea Time with you all!

I was actually pretty excited to get rolling this year with our tea time because I wanted to shake up our tea time and add in some "themed" teas to go with it.

I really loved the idea of teaching different cultures to my kids so they can get more exposure to them and even learn more about their heritage.

So this time around we did a Japanese tea time--and they loved it!

First I went out and bought some Japanese food:

These Koala March cookies and Strawberry Pocky's are a very popular Japanese treat. Pocky's come in all kinds of flavors like chocolate, green tea, cookies and cream, almond, mango, and chocolate banana too. 

We had some wasabi peas to spice things up.

And these Shrimp Chips--I know you may think that doesn't sound good but they really are.

One of my favorite things I picked up from Whole Food were these Mochi balls filled with ice cream. Little Bella couldn't get enough of these. 

My kids love Sushi so I also added some of that.

And some tofu too.


One of my favorite things were these Japanese sodas with marbles in them, they use these at their festivals and they are very popular there, so we used these in place of our tea. I've been known to switch out tea before for something else, like in this post. Don't be afraid to do what works best for you.

I remember drinking these as a child.

When you open the bottle it comes with a green device to push the marble down. You can see the marble in the center below.

You just push it down--and the marble falls into the neck of the bottle and stays there.

Can you see it below? It is covered with bubbles. This drink is popular and has been around a long time!

I wrote this out on a board to help them understand exactly what a Haiku was:

We watched a cute video on Japan on our Galaxy View:

And played some Japanese music in the background on Spotify to really get in the mood.

We also got supplementary books on Haikus (a Japanese form of poetry) and Japan from the library:

You can find more books on Haikus HERE. 

My 5 boys really liked this Samurai book:

And then I used some printables to explain what a Haiku was:

Some Q & A:

Then we took some time making our own haikus.

We also practiced some words in Japanese (hello, goodbye & counting to ten) and we passed around one of the books we are using this year to learn some Japanese words called The Usborne First Thousand Words in Japanese. 

I really liked all the glossy pictures and that it had Japanese writing in it as well.

They also learned how to bow the right way and greet each other respectfully.

All in all, it was such a fun time and the kids really enjoyed it and learned lots of new things. I am thinking about doing a Mexican theme next. The food would be super easy to find too!

QUICK HELPFUL TIP BEFORE I GO:

My very favorite pencil in the world, these wonderful Ticonderoga pencils (I am telling you because they don't break, even with 5 boys!) are on sale for $9.96 for nearly 100! That is about 10 cents a pencil and a super great deal. It is only for a limited time so don't miss it!

I hope you enjoyed our pictures!

You might also like our other Poetry Tea Time posts:

OUR FIRST POETRY TEA TIME

POETRY TEA TIME IS BACK AND HOW I KEEP IT SIMPLE

POETRY TEA TIME AND THE ART BOX

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