Hina Matsuri - Japan
 

Georgeous displays of traditional dolls in department-store windows signal the approach of "Hina Matsuri", the Doll's Festival, a special day for girls. At this festival, celebrated on 3 March, families with girls display a set of "hina" dolls and miniature household articles on a stepped dais covered with a red cloth, and sometimes hold a party for their children.

The dolls are usually dressed in period costume and include an Emperor and Empress, ladies, ministers, musicians and footman. The dais on which they are displayed usually has five or seven tiers, and the total number of dolls is usually fifteen. The food and drink served at the party often includes "shirozake", (a sweet, slightly alcoholic beverage made from rice malt and sake) and "hishi-mochi" (lozenge-shaped rice cakes), fruit-shaped candy and small red-and-white rice cakes.

The festival is also known as "Momo-no-Sekku" or Peach Festival, because of the peach blossoms used to add extra color to the displays of dolls.

http://www.ginkoya.com/pages/girlsday.html
http://web.mit.edu/jpnet/holidays/Mar/hinamaturi.shtml

Could make paper dolls in wrapping-paper kimono, and tissue paper 'peach blossoms' to make your own hina display.

Hi, Senshisteph - This festival sounds wonderful ..... what did you do in class for it today?

We talked about it a little in circle time, then later in the day everybody made hina! The 3-4 class glued a pompom onto a cardboard tube to make the head and body. The kimono was made from a semicircle of paper with the corners rounded off, this was fastened round the cardboard tube so it flared out a bit.
The 4-5 class made origami ones (I have an instruction sheet but it's kind of hard to explain without the pictures!!) which were then fixed to a red card.
We also served the little coloured rice-crackers at snack time, and Yuko (the Japanese co-teacher) brought in her own Hina display to show the children.

Edited to add - just found the same origami pattern as we used at the bottom of this page: http://www.tourism.metro.tokyo.jp/en...ring/hina.html