Art Class Celebrates the Chinese New Year!

As an art teacher, I have the freedom to create curriculum for the class as we go along- as long as I meet my NVA standards of course! This allows me to gather inspiration from just about anywhere for my lessons which is great. This past New Year's Eve I spent here in Tennessee and my boyfriend was still visiting his family back in Boston. When we realized we weren't going to spend the New Year's together his immediate response was, "Well we will celebrate the Chinese New Year instead this year." Aside from the suggestion being incredible sweet I thought it would also be a culturally rich and fun topic for a unit plan in my art room. So far so good!

First we read the book "Sam and the Lucky Money" and the students learned about the traditional red envelops that children receive from their elders with lucky leisee inside. We then created our own and decorated them with tiger images as 2010 is the year of the tiger. I am currently in the process of making "Mona Bucks" which the students will have to earn to put in their leisee envelops in order to earn their way to the Frist Center in March.


Then the students created beautiful paper fans! We used color diffusing sheets so when they were painted the images bleed thru to both sides of the paper. The following day when our paintings were dry we learned the according fold. These turned out wonderfully and really brighten up the classroom!



Now we are decorating the hallway with dragon masks that the students' made. We used a coloring sheet for the face, I made a tracer for the students to use to cut out the construction paper beards to go around the face, and the students got to use that accordion fold that they learned this week to make wild and crazy hairs! All fun stuff!



Finally next week we will begin to make paper lanterns. I can't wait!

Check out all these projects on the The King's Daughters' Artsonia account! While you're there vote for Kourtney (thru Saturday 1/30/10)!!!