Ninja Homeschool!

Both boys have been very interested with Ninjas lately...so we decided to do Ninja Homeschool!

Have put together a Pinterest board, appropriately titled Ninja Fun! in case anyone else has little Ninjas in training who want to do Ninja Homeschool...

We have used the following resources:
Books:
Various nonfiction books about Japan, as well as:
Story of the World (selected chapters related to Japan), Japanese Children's Favorite Stories, Night of the Ninjas, and A Hero's Guide to Warriors (selected pages related to Ninjas).
Little Bro has been reading Night of the Ninjas and is using this as his main book for Ninja Homeschool.
Big Bro has been doing more research, as well as reading historical fiction, to find out more about Ninjas. 
Lapbooks:
The boys have both created their own lapbooks about Japan.
We found some nice free resources through Homeschool Share about Japan. 
We also found some great resources through Enchanted Learning that help to give some background information related to Japan.
Websites:
For younger children, Magic Tree House has some background information and activities to go with Night of the Ninjas. Even though this book is more at Little Bro's reading level, Big Bro was still able to enjoy doing some of the activities that tied in with this book with Little Bro.
Dramatic Play & Fine Arts:
Melissa & Doug have a neat Sushi play set and since it ties in with Japan study, Little Bro had fun playing with this set!
They have done various art projects as well as role playing with wearing Ninja costumes.
Target has a variety of Ninja costumes for boys. Big Bro and Little Bro chose out different ones and were very happy to have found costumes that were the same theme, but not identical.
Shortly after taking the photo of Little Bro in his first choice ninja costume, we had to return it to Target to get another one. He was bummed at first, as he LOVED the one in this photo, especially because of the padding meant to look like muscles.
However, Little Bro is on the small side and try as we did to make it work for him, the belt was too big and the pants were too long for him. Even though it was a size S (4-6), it was just too big for his small frame.
Thankfully, one of the other Target ninja costumes that was also a size S (4-6) fit him perfectly.
The best thing was that the costumes were on sale this week. Yay!
So if you have aspiring ninjas, this is the week to get some ninja gear for them!
All in all, it has been very interesting and fun for them to learn about the role of Ninjas in Japanese history and culture. If you have done any neat ninja-themed projects, or if you have studied Japan, please be sure to share your link to your post in the comments section.