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Happy Chinese New Year!

2/22/2015

Fourth grade students have been studying art from various non-Western civilizations this year. We started the year learning about art from India. Over the last few months students have been discovering art, traditions and celebrations from China and Japan. Leading up to the Chinese New Year, students created various art projects.

Prior to beginning our unit, I visited the Chinese-American Museum of Chicago and collected resources and photographs to share with students. Last year, I attended the Chinese New Year parade and took pictures and videos of the dancing lions.

Our first project was creating a paper vase inspired by porcelain of the Ming Dynasty. Each student began by creating their own symmetrical design and painted patterns on the vase using the traditional blue and white.

Later students learned about Chinese brush painting. Each student painted cherry blossoms to fill their paper vases.

Our next project introduced students to the story of the dragon, Nian, and the history of Chinese New Year celebrations. Each student then wrote their own dragon story. The stories were written on brightly colored construction paper to create the body of a dragon. Students added heads, tails, scales, fire and creative details to their dragons.

The creative dragons continued as students began making large dragon masks. Students were asked to follow a color scheme, using warm, cool, monochromatic, primary or secondary colors to create their masks.

Students also made paper lanterns inspired by the story of Nian. Each student created a dragon drawing for the interior "light" of their lantern, and cut slits to create the red exterior.

The sixth grade art club also contributed to celebrating the Chinese New Year by meeting for a week during lunch and recess time to create dragons, Origmai, lanterns, paper fans and more.

Chinese New Year began this year on February 19. A few days before the holiday, fourth grade classes decorated a zodiac calendar and worked together to create a large dragon on our class bulletin board. Students used construction paper to assemble a winding body with creative details and embellishments.

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Why I Want to be an Art Teacher (1997)

2/11/2015

3 Comments

"I would like to share with you the reasons why I want to be an art teacher. I enjoy learning about art. I think art brings out the true talent in people. I think art helps express people's feelings and emotions. I think it is important for students to be taught art. I also like how art can be fun and exciting and how everyone has their own style.

I enjoy learning about art. In school and in books I learn about famous artists and their techniques and styles, and enjoy it. I want to see others enjoy it too. That's one of the reasons I want to be an art teacher.

I think art brings out the true talent in people. They see that they have created something unique and their own. That makes them feel good, so they keep drawing or painting etc., then eventually they get better and better. If people learn about art and like it, and keep practicing, they will bring out the true talent in themselves.

I think art helps express people's feelings and emotions. Pablo Picasso is a good example of what I am trying to say. When one of Pablo's friends died Pablo was very sad. He painted only in shades of blue to express his sadness. When Pablo met a girl and was having a good relationship with her, he was very happy, so in result he painted in only shades of rose color. What I'm trying to say is, art can bring out the feelings in a person, instead of having them bottled up inside, an artist could put it down on canvas or sculpt it.

I think it is important to teach students art. They need to learn while they are young so they will be successful adults. If students aren't taught about how important art is, we won't have great future artists.

I also like how art can be fun and exciting and how everyone has their own style. Students that think they are bad at art are wrong, everyone has their own style.

As you can see, I have many reasons for wanting to be an art teacher when I grow up. I enjoy learning about art. I think art brings out the true talent in people. I think art helps express people's feelings and emotions, I think it is important for students to be taught about art. I also like how art can be fun and exciting and how everyone has their own style."

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Happy Chinese New Year!

Why I Want to be an Art Teacher (1997)

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