Xin Nian Kuai Lei! Gung Huy Fat Choi! (Happy Chinese New Year!)

Chinese New Year is one of the units of study I look forward to every winter not just because the student's make such beautiful art, but also because they all get incredibly excited to celebrate this holiday!

Display outside the Art Room

To prepare, we read books on Chinese New Year:

We learn about the Story of Chinese New Year:

We watch Dragon Dances from Hong Kong

We are also very lucky at our school to have a teacher who has been to China many times and speaks fluent Mandarin.  He is our music teacher, and he shares with us plenty of information on China and artifacts to show the students. He also introduces the students to Chinese music and musical instruments.

Left to Right: Plum Blossom Painted Art, Qin Terra-Cotta Warriors and Horses, a Red Lantern and carved Jade Stone. 

We learn about the endangered Giant Panda Bears that are from China and watch the Panda Cam at the San Diego Zoo.  Sometimes we are lucky enough to catch a panda eating bamboo!

We discover our Animal Sign from the Chinese Zodiac

And on Chinese New Year Day, we wear the color red for good luck, and try to use chopsticks to eat our lunch!

This year, students in grades Pre-K to 3rd grade created artwork displayed in time for this special holiday.

Pre-K students made Giant Panda Bears with paper and crayons.

Second grade students created Chinese Lanterns, decorating them with Chinese characters, Chinese zodiac animals, or other images associated with Chinese New Year.

Kindergarten students helped create our own Chinese Dragon, that once finished hung from the ceiling by the main office to welcome all visitors to our school!

First grade students learned how to draw a sheep and how to write "Sheep" in Chinese Characters.

Third grade students created Plum blossom paintings, after discovering that the Plum Blossoms are a sign of courage and hope and begin to bloom during Chinese New Year.

This morning, Mr. Scott said the morning announcements in Mandarin.  The look on the students' faces was priceless!! They couldn't believe that the person talking was our very own music teacher, Mr. Scott!  

I am very fortunate to have supportive administration, collaborative effort with music, and excited classroom teachers and support staff to help make this an event for the entire school.

First Grade Sunflowers

Author Laurence Anholt has a series of children's books based on famous artists in history and I use many of his books from the series in my art curriculum.  For this lesson, first grade students were introduced to Vincent Van Gogh with "Van Gogh and the Sunflowers" from this series.

Van Gogh and the Sunflowers Book

At the end of the book, Vincent Van Gogh gives the main character a painting of sunflowers, one of his most famous paintings in history.

After discussing the color, shape, texture, and space elements of Van Gogh's Sunflower painting, students begin to create their own sunflowers using tempera paint and oil pastels.  Here are a few finished masterpieces!!

Keith Haring Paper Sculptures

I got the idea for this lesson for my first graders from haringkids.com to create 3Dimentional Keith Haring Figures using strips of colored construction paper... I had no idea this would be such a fabulous lesson!

First, we discussed Keith's artwork and how he conveys movement in his artwork.  I then had the students come up and re-create the dance moves seen in his work.

Students came up one at a time and their classmates had to guess which color person in the painting they were imitating.  This was a really fun way to tie dance into the lesson. 

I then had them watch an old Sesame Street clip that has Keith Haring's people become animated and dance off the screen.  The song is called "Exit" and it is a very catchy tune and fun to watch!

Sesame Street Exit Video

Then the students and I explored the different things you could do to a piece of construction paper 1" by 8"... bend it, fold it, roll it, etc.  I asked the students to show me how you could make legs out of the paper.  Then I let them get to work on their own Keith Haring 3Dimentional people! Below is a sample of what they made

By the way:  This was extremely fun for the students, and for me!!



Next class, they can contine working on their 3Dimentional People, and then they will be drawing their people in Keith Haring's style, but add a background to show us what their person is doing.  I can't wait to see what they come up with!