TEACH JAPAN
Resources for students and educators
TEACH JAPAN
Resources for students and educators
About Japan: A Teacher’s Resource provides a variety of resources about Japan to educators for use in the K-12 classroom. Resources are organized around the themes of culture, environment, globalization, history, Japanese language, and social issues and consist of lesson plans, articles by leading scholars and primary source images and video. Through these classroom ready resources, educators are able to expand and deepen their teaching on Japan.
Explore the Denver Art Museum’s comprehensive collection of lesson plans and resources for educators. Lessons range from 30 to 50 minutes, and are based on objects from the Denver Museum’s Japanese collection. Resources available for all ages and learning levels.
Search, download, and create resources for your classroom using the Freer Sackler digital collection. With more than forty thousand works available for high-resolution download—expanding regularly with new acquisitions—you can explore the Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art from anywhere in the world, whenever you like.
Students will examine the guiding principles of a tea gathering, simulate a thick tea (koicha) gathering; and demonstrate how the host and guests show respect to one another.
Discover the rich history of the Japanese tea gathering.
In Japanese, the word for bowl is chawan, and most Japanese people use chawan every day to eat rice. The word chawan, however, does not mean “rice bowl,” but “teabowl.” This is because such bowls were originally used, not for rice, but for tea! Learn what qualities make a teabowl.
Learn about the way of tea by exploring a variety of tea implements and practices dating back to the Kamakura period (1185-1333).
This lesson introduces students to the Japanese tea ceremony to consider the art and the tradition of the tea ceremony and study the serving pieces used in the ceremony by participating in a tea ceremony. Students will learn the importance of the performance of tea ceremony through the history of how it became what it is today.
Introduce students to Japanese art and culture as they explore works in the Philadelphia Art Museum’s collection. Each art image is accompanied by background information, a set of looking questions, and related classroom activity suggestions that students can use individually, in small groups, or as a whole class.
From simple, Zen-like tea bowls to ornate lacquer boxes the objects in this presentation illustrate Japanese aesthetics and demonstrate both ways of making art particular to Japan, and techniques pioneered elsewhere and perfected in Japan. Functional objects introduce daily life during different time periods. Connections are made between Japanese and Chinese culture and art.
Find out more about TeachJapan.
Lead funding for the Asian Art Museum’s TeachJapan is generously provided by The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.
Additional support is provided by Susan and Kevin McCabe.
Teach Japan was created in collaboration with the following arts organizations:
