One Act Play| Ojisan and the Grateful Statues Japanese Folk Tale Grades 4 to 6

BUNDLE This charming play based on a Japanese folk tale and its unit (37 pages) share the themes of New Years, multiculturalism, winter, kindness and forgiveness. Students strengthen their study of other cultures, reading (fluency), speaking (diction) and listening skills (restating) while learning to work cooperatively. This is excellent and very suitable for a Vocal Music, Social Studies or Drama class.

Based on the beloved Japanese folk tale by the same name, students will have an opportunity to:

• dramatize a folk tale using many of the elements of drama

• create straw hats

• design snowflakes

• sing an original song written in a pentatonic scale

• and use their imaginations to express emotion through movement.

Integrate with your vocal music teacher and present the play together! Your students can sing and accompany the song with metallophones, xyllophones and percussion.

The Story: Once upon a time an old man and an old woman were living in a country village in Japan. They were very poor and spent every day weaving big hats out of straw. Whenever they finished a number of hats, the old man would take them to the nearest town to sell them.

One day the old man said to the old woman: "New Year's is the day after tomorrow. How I wish we had some rice-cakes to eat on New Year's Day! Even one or two little cakes would be enough. Without some rice-cakes we can't even celebrate New Year's."

"Well, then," said the old woman, "After you've sold these hats, why don't you buy some rice-cakes and bring them back with you?"

So early the next morning the old man took the five new hats that they had made, and went to town to sell them. But after he got to town he was unable to sell a single hat. And to make things still worse, it began to snow very hard.

The old man was very sad as he began trudging wearily back toward his village. He was going along a lonesome mountain trail when he suddenly came upon a row of six stone statues of Jizo, the protector of children, all covered with snow.

"My, my! Now isn't this a pity," the old man said. "These are only stone statues of Jizo, but even so just think how cold they must be standing here in the snow."

"I know what I'll do!" the old man suddenly said to himself. "This will be just the thing."

What happens next? You’ll just have to grab a copy to find out!

This product comes with:

• script with stage directions to help you be successful
• stage properties list
• costume suggestions
• snowflake construction directions
• hat construction directions
• post performance discussion questions and quick activity
• original song (for optional use)
• recording of the melody with the accompaniment

Comprehensive? You bet.

Time tested and created by an award winning drama teacher of 38 years,

Ojisan and the Grateful Statues is a guaranteed winner.

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