Gifts from Japan

I won a contest on a blog about raising bilingual children (http://bilingualmonkeys.com), and the boys got a surprise package from a bilingual family in Japan. They were very excited to get mail!

The package included all kinds of fun things, like origami paper and instructions, bookmarks with pictures of Japanese landmarks, candy, a fan, stickers, little animals, a Japanese coin and toy money, and a picture the boy from that family drew for them, and some origami that the girl made for them.

We looked up Japan on the map.

And Benjamin and I got busy trying our hand at origami, and this is what we've managed so far... 2 elephants, a giraffe, a deer, a rat, a bear, and a boar.

If anyone reading this is raising bilingual children, I highly recommend the Bilingual Monkeys site for ideas and encouragement.