March 3 is Girl’s Day aka Hinamatsuri in Japan! I never did much for Hinamatsuri in the past, but since our daughter has started Japanese immersion daycare, I’ve been trying to do better at celebrating Japanese holidays. This year I bought the girls some new Japanese outfits and made temari sushi for the first time! If you’re interested in teaching your kids about Hinamatsuri, I’m including a free lesson plan at the bottom of this post, plus links to activities.
Hinamatsuri Traditions
I feel like Hinamatsuri is a Japanese holiday that didn’t really get picked up by the Japanese American community. None of my friends growing up celebrated it. So everything I know is really what I learned from Jemma’s daycare.
Maybe the most well known tradition for Girl’s Day is to display dolls representing the emperor, empress, and their court. These dolls can be super fancy and cost hundreds of dollars, so I haven’t really invested in that yet. But Jemma has brought home paper craft dolls that she’s made at school, and we usually put those on display for a while.
I did at least get the girls some cute outfits and take some pictures. I’ll link the clothes I got here on Amazon. What’s the point of having two girls if you don’t do dress up every now and then?
Hinamatsuri Food – Temari Sushi
It seems like sushi is a big food to eat on Girl’s Day! At Jemma’s daycare they serve chirashi for lunch, which I learned is a common food to eat. Since she ate chirashi there, I decided to try a different sushi at home. This year I made temari sushi for the first time, which is a sushi that is shaped like a ball and decorated with various toppings.
Just One Cookbook has a great tutorial on her page if you’re interested. But I actually copied mine from a Tastemade Japan video I saw. It really was as easy as it looks!
Free Hinamatsuri Lesson Plan and Activities
Are you interested in starting a new tradition celebrating Hinamatsuri? Or maybe you’re just looking to teach your students/children about traditions in other cultures. I’ve put together this simple lesson plan for you to introduce Hinamatsuri at home or in the classroom! You can click on that link above to download the pdf.
For the activities, you can use the links above to Just One Cookbook’s temari sushi recipe. Here is her chirashizushi recipe as well.
Hikina Designs also has a fun Hinamatsuri Coloring Page at her website!
If you want to make Hina dolls out of paper cups, you can use the print outs and directions from this post! At my daughter’s daycare, they decorate the doll’s clothes using origami paper, which I think is really pretty.
All in all, I thought this was a fun low-key Hinamatsuri celebration at home. I’d totally do this again next year. Any other Japanese Americans celebrate Hinamatsuri? What do you do?