Chinese Calligraphy on Paper Lanterns

This week is Chinese New Year. I wanted to celebrate but was hesitant to do a lesson on Chinese calligraphy because I remember how it took two weeks to learn (not master) our first horizontal stroke in my college Chinese Calligraphy class, and two more for a vertical stroke. I resolved to the fact that skimming the surface was better than not teaching it at all. First, my students handled ink stones, rice paper and bottles of ink. They practiced the correct way to hold a sumi brush (vertically with the thumb opposite from the index and middle fingers). We discussed the fact that there ar e more than 1,000 Chinese characters and explored how these came from pictures that evolved over a thousand years. Japanese and other Asian countries share many of the same/ similar characters, although Japanese have phonetic alphabets too: hiragana for Japanese words, and katakana for foreign words.

Each student learned to make vertical strokes to represent bamboo stalks, and triangular strokes for bamboo leaves. These brush drawings help everyone feeling successful the first day of trying. They used black watercolor paint since ink stains are impossible to get out.

Then, each student chose a character to learn. They could also learn their name in Japanese katana. Visually impaired students used a close circuit TV to magnify the writing enough to practice his name many times, first with a marker, and then with a brush.

Once students were ready, they wrote their name or character on a paper lantern. Several students who were completely blind, needed me to guide their hand, but we had repeated the process enough times that they would say, "over, down, across..." just as we were about to make each mark. Lanterns rested in #10 cans to dry and then they were hung from the ceiling.

I wish we still stressed penmanship in our culture the way that calligraphy is still valued in Asian countries. My Korean friend once told me that if you didn't have good handwriting, you couldn't get a girlfriend where he lived.  I'm glad my students got a feel for how language and writing is different in different parts of the word, and can appreciate the art form of Chinese writing.

Cinco de Mayo Tissue Paper Flowers

Now's the time to get in fiesta prep-mode for the Cinco de Mayo. This holiday commemorates the Battle of Puebla in 1862, when the French army was defeated, despite the fact that they were better equiped and outnumbered the Mexican resisters three to one. The win was a real a boost to morale and today Mexican Americans celebrate their heritage on the 5th of May. 

My school's prom happens to fall on May 5th this year, which is why the theme is Cinco de Mayo. My students and I are making tissue paper flowers for decorations.  Large flowers require 4-6 pieces of tissue paper (we're using 20 inch squares for most of them). Three half sheets make a medium sized flower.

The tissue is stacked and folded like a fan (or accordion). Then small notches are cut for the wire or string to tie the pieces together. Petals can be formed by cutting the ends round or pointed.

 Slide thumbs deeply between two sheets of tissue and gently pull in opposite directions, to fluff each layer.

This very large table holds flowers made from about 70 sheets of tissue paper, so you can get a lot of bang for you buck when it comes to decorating. Small flowers, like the ones seen near the top of this page, are made from 1/4 or 1/6 of sheet of tissue, and are nice for table toppers.

Enjoy your Cinco de Mayo in style this year!

Art projects for Learning about Our World

Art and Social Studies pair perfectly in the classroom. In March, when our town was exploding with Japanese Cherry Blossoms, I taught a unit on Japanese Art.  Japan is dear to my heart, having lived in Hokkaido for more than a year. I began by teaching students about the culture: traditional food, dress, homes, gardens, religion, and even some basic phrases. We handled artifacts and tried on a  kimono.

I read “One Leaf Rides the Wind” which is a counting book of haikus that teach about bonsai trees, pagodas, koi fish and tea ceremony. I have students figure out the pattern of the haiku from my reading, and then they write a haiku about themselves. They mount this under their name, written with sumi brush and ink in katakana (Japanese characters). Younger children decorated large koi fish wind socks I made from bulletin board paper.

We also used brush and ink to do some bamboo studies. I managed to bring in fresh bamboo with leaves for students to feel and better understand the brush strokes.

Japanese are famous for their wood cuts, and so we study Hiroshige prints and talk about the printmaking process, before making our own relief prints. I’m not comfortable giving visually impaired students carving tools, so we just used pencils and foam to create our images and then brayer and ink to edition them.

Greek Art is fun to teach, because the students love me to read myths to them while they work. We listened to a documentary on ancient art, used white sheets for over-clothes togas, and discussed the culture at length. We looked at how and why our government buildings resemble those of Ancient Greece, and I asked them to find each type of column capitol (Ionic, Doric, Corinthian) in our community, which is flooded with neoclassical architecture.  Students used charts of vase forms to create their own symmetrical, black-figure vase image, complete with a stylistic narrative from their life.

I didn’t realize that Cinco de Maya was a bigger deal in the U.S. then much of Mexico, until this year. I played the NPR story "Cinco de Mayo: Whose Holiday Is It Anyway?" for my students, and we looked at images from Mexican culture. Older students cut tissue paper which teaches use of negative shape, balance, and pattern. (Saved scraps are great for collages and contact paper stained glass projects.)

Elementary school students filled plastic Easter Eggs from home with dry rice or beans, to create papier machie maracas, which they painted and played to mariachi music. This seemed to be a favorite project for some of my non-verbal students.