Materials:
1. Computer and Printer
2. Large pieces of paper (11 x 17 minimum)
3. Pencils
4. Black Paint and Paint Supplies
Behavioral Objectives:
1. Plan for a design/picture.
2. Practice and refine painting techniques.
3. Develop ability to control wrist.
Anticipatory Set: Show the student some Chinese writing and have them guess what language it is. Tell them it is Chinese and that the Chinese has a very special way of writing their language because they don’t use letter to make words like English does; instead they use symbols that stand for a single word, so that each word has a single symbol or character. This means that there are thousands and thousands of characters in Chinese writing and when you learn to write Chinese you have to memorize thousands of characters. Then tell the student that they are going to write Chinese characters for art today.
Procedure:
Pre-Art Activity Instructions:
1. Have each student think of a phase, sentence, or set of words they would like to write in Chinese, tell them to record it onto a piece of paper.
2. Then let them use an English-Chinese dictionary on the internet to look up their words.
3. The following link has a good dictionary, but if it doesn’t work there are many more on the web to be found.
http://www.xuezhongwen.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=translate<br>4. Havethe students cut and paste the Chinese characters on the website into a word processing program, and print them off, now they are ready to draw and paint their characters.
Art Activity:
1. Give each student a sheet of paper
2. Instruct them to first draw their symbols on the sheet and then paint them with the brush and black paint.
3. Tell them to start from the top of the page and go down, with one symbol under another, because that is how Chinese is written.
4. After they are done had them write and paint the English word they painted on the bottom of the paper, or in the back if there is no room in the front.
5. Hang the papers up to dry.
Closure: Ask the students how they would like to write in Chinese all the time, or to learn all those characters for all those words. Ask what advantages such a system of writing might have.
