People gather as work colleagues, classmates and families for the festival.The Japanese people love to go out to areas well known for Sakura trees and have picnics underneath the blossoms.
This is called Hanami (Flower Viewing).
Look at the kanji characters for はHA なNA みMI
Can you see how they put "flower" and "to look" together?
The weather report on TV includes updates of where the blossoms are blooming each day. They colour the map of Japan in shades of pink to show where the blossoms are blooming.
Watch the video showing some of the places where cherry blossoms have been blooming this year.
Around Japan in Spring time everything takes on a cherry blossom theme! Look at some of these products...
Sakura Song
There is a Sakura song that's very famous in Japan. Watch this clip and listen to the song, maybe you've even heard it before?
Let's make a Sakura picture - Choose one of the following options.
Option 1 Colour this picture in with textas or pencils.
Option 2 Colour in the trunk and branches of the tree. Then scrunch up pieces of crepe paper and glue them on.
You might want to work in partners on this option. One person colours in while the other person starts scrunching paper. Then when the coloring in is done the first person starts gluing the blossoms down.
Option 3 Colour the trunk and branches of the tree. Then glue on the hole punched blossoms or love hearts.
You might want to work in partners on this option. One person colours in while the other person starts punching out the shapes. Then the first person can start gluing the shapes down on the branches.