Abstract
“Activities such as contacts with children” became a required content of home economics in the2008 revised Course of Study for Junior High Schools. This is a measure taken against the declining birth rates. However, it cannot be said that the course has been steadily adopted. The main reason for this is the short hours allocated for home economics lessons. It is, therefore, difficult to spend two hours of lesson time which is required for junior high school students to visit kindergartens and nurseries to conduct activities such as contacting with children. We planned a lesson for “child school visitation-type activities such as contacts with children.” to be implemented in one-hour of home economics lesson time.
A kindergarten bus was used to transport approximately 100 pupils from the kindergartens to a nearby junior high schools, enabling students in four 3rd grade classes to engage in activities such as contacts with children in each class (30 students per class) during the home economics lesson time. Acurriculum for home economics with the content “A. Family, home and child growth” (21.5 hour timeallocation) was thus created centering on one-hour lessons for activities such as contacts with children. This paper clarifies the processes from lesson planning to implementation and the significance of this initiative.
