The children listened to a story about the origins of the Moon Festival. They were instructed on how to draw their own moon cake and decorate it with their own designs. The children shared several varieties of moon cakes to complete the lesson.

Some moon cakes contained, egg surrounded by lotus paste, others has an inner filling of red bean, or pineapple paste. The children voted on liking the lotus filling the best.

Today we learned our Chinese names and learned the song “well behaved little rabbit” ‘xiou tu zi’(Little rabbit)

The children explored with circles and lines. They practiced the skill of looking, listening, and drawing and drew little rabbit.

Today we had another great lesson in Chinese calligraphy in which the children practiced writing fish ” yu”. We followed the same format in which Ms. Dong reviewed the materials to be used and the step by step process in using the bamboo brush and ink stone to write the symbol for fish on rice paper. The pretty rice paper we used today was thicker and textured. We discussed the language with the children.

We learned that this form of writing is very challenging for Chinese children and they spend many hours practicing and memorizing the individual symbols the equivalent to words in the English language. Ms. Dong explained that by the time Chinese children are in kindergarten they are expected to know how to write 200 symbols and know their meaning. Ms. Dong also explained that in order to read the newspaper one must know up to 4,000 different symbols!

It was another great day in Chinese-Art! The children utilized the bamboo brush again and practiced holding the brush vertically. After Ms. Dong demonstrated the process of painting the 2 fish on rice paper (one big fish, one smaller fish) we reviewed the instructions by observing Ms. Dong’s work.

The question posed, “are both fish swimming in the same direction”and ” are both fish the same size or is one bigger than the other.”One student asked “what is rice paper?” Ms. Dong explained rice paper is paper made from rice stalks becasue it absorbs water. The children continue to do great work and amaze their teacher guides!

Today the children were introduced to Chinese Calligraphy utilizing a bamboo brush and rice paper. They particularly enjoyed making black ink. In China, Ms. Dong explained “we use ink stick and a heavy ink stone to grind the ink stick in a circular motion to make the ink.” Each student had an opportunity to to grind the ink.

Ms. Dong also explained that in China it is the students’ job to prepare the ink for the art teacher! The children learned to write water, “shui” and fish. They started by tracing the symbol and then followed Ms. Dongs’ step by step instruction to create Chinese Calligraphy with a bamboo brush.

The students enjoyed learning “Why Jellyfish Sting?” yesterday. Ms. Dong followed the groups interest and excitement of the topic to draw jellyfish with oil pastels, and paint over the canvas with water color. She encouraged the students to use a variety of color as there are many varieties of jellyfish.

She instructed the students to stagger the Jellyfish with large and small size jellyfish (big and small). A student asked “What is stagger?” The question opened the discussion up to what it means to draw in a straight line as opposed to stagger drawings. We covered the half circle when drawing the jellyfish and curve lines for the tentacles. The students do beautifully, creative work!

Today the students were introduced to Landscape painting. Mrs. Dong explained landscape painting versus still life and portrait painting. The students understood the concept of landscape painting and were able to share different elements of landscape painting such as water, the sun, clouds, mountains and trees.

The students created their own painting of a lake or river with the fish that live in the water. They used oil pastels with water color. When drawing their fish they draw a half oval as the top of the fish and another half oval as the bottom of the fish with a triangle as the tail. The use of geometric terminology commits the geometric shapes to memory.

Children will learn to draw and paint ocean, sea, lake, rivers with sky, tree, and boat. Experience color mixing, watercolor and acrylic paint application methods, ways of utilizing a variety of tools to create texture.

Today the children made an accordion fish paper cut. They started with a half piece of construction paper and folded the paper creating a second and third rectangle. The students identified the shape and then folded the paper like a fan. This was a challenging project that required precise folding, drawing a half of a fish and cutting the design.

Today we started making a sea turtle out of posterboard, paper plates, pastels and water color. We studied illustrations from “Turtle in the Sea” by Jim Arnosky. We focused our discussion on the pattern of the sea turtles’ front and back legs.

The project required that the children cut out a traced head and front and back legs and create a repeat pattern. Tomorrow we will finish our sea turtles and review the hexagon as our pattern for the shell. Another great day of art!

Today the students made origami fish. Origami is the Japanese art of folding paper into decorative shapes and figures…ori-meaning fold and gami meaning paper. We will circle back tomorrow to see if the children remember the meaning of the word.

I am certain they will! Ms. Dong demonstrates the process using language such as “take this right hand corner and fold to this left hand corner to make a rectangle. She reiterates the need to be precise in our folding. We discussed what “precise” means. Geometry is art and we had many opportunities to reinforce our knowledge of geometric shapes when making our origami fish.

Mrs. Dong always starts the lesson with a demonstration of the art project of the day. The children practice listening and learning to follow a sequence of instructions. Today the children molded fish out of clay! They selected a color (several neons to choose from and a crowd favorite) and picked a complementary color to add stripes or dots. They learned how to add detail with a plastic scalpel and even tested their knowledge of geometric shapes.

When learning to draw and sculpt fish Mrs. Dong refers to the fish body as an oval and the fish tail as a triangle.” The repetition of such language solidifies their knowledge of the shapes while enticing their creativity in creating their very own clay fish. After completing the clay fish we made an origami boat to house our fish. It was another creative, fun day in art!

Today the students made origami fish. Origami is the Japanese art of folding paper into decorative shapes and figures…ori-meaning fold and gami meaning paper. We will circle back tomorrow to see if the children remember the meaning of the word.

I am certain they will! Ms. Dong demonstrates the process using language such as “take this right hand corner and fold to this left hand corner to make a rectangle. She reiterates the need to be precise in our folding. We discussed what “precise” means. Geometry is art and we had many opportunities to reinforce our knowledge of geometric shapes when making our origami fish.

Today, our children use the wooden tools to make their own intricate designs of Fish on the scratch paper.

Scratch directly on the surface of the paper without pencil and eraser, and their drawings appear in color, like magic!

Today, the children cut out a triangular portion of the paper plate and used it as a tail for their paper plate fish.

They then painted and decorated the fish with glitter and sequence.

The children learned to identify shapes as a way to draw different parts of an angel fish. They saw that the main body that began with the mouth was in the shape of a triangle. They were then asked to draw a semi-circle to section off the main body from the tail.

After drawing a fish on black construction paper, they were shown how to cut circles and other shapes to decorate their piece and make a collage.

We continued work on our fish project and applied color to all areas of the fish with oil pastels.

The children added bubbles seaweed and more baby fish to their art piece. They applied water color to the background to complete their pieces.

Create an art piece of fish every day while learning about the elements of design, color, shapes of fish, color mixing and basic brush techniques. Students will experience a wide variety of art material of fine art, pencil, watercolor, oil pastel, collage, clay to create their own artworks. Today, the children began their 2 day project.

It began with them taking instruction on how to draw shapes to make a fish. They expanded their pieces with their own drawings of baby fish. They were then asked to use oil pastels to color and make designs. We will continue tomorrow with showing them how to add seaweed and applying water color to produce the background.