Woven Chinese Dragons

Materials:
9x12 White paper
Black tempera cake paint or watercolors
Oil pastels
6x9 black paper
Book: Legend of the Chinese Dragon by Marie Sellier

Day 1

1. Woven Chinese Dragons! Second grade learns about China in March and April.
2. Read: Legend of the Chinese Dragon by Marie Sellier. Talk about the animals that make up the dragon: ox, fish, horse, serpent, bird.
2. Artists designed and colored two sheets of paper- one with dragon scales and the other with an abstract design- all in oil pastels. Talk about abstract shapes. They start from a real object, but the lines are very messy!
3. Then they painted over these papers in black tempera/watercolor.

Day 2
4. Next the artists cut strips from the scales page and wove it into the other page to create the dragon's body.
5. The artists learned about symmetry to create their dragon's heads that they cut from black paper and then designed with oil pastels.
6. The artists cut necks and tails and then colored them as well before attaching them to their dragon.
7. The artists cut out and colored two sets of people legs- just like the ones that carry and dance the Chinese dragons!
8. Finally, the artists can write their names in Chinese to finish their projects.

Apple Basket Weaving

I did this activity with second grade. They got a strip of brown paper and had to mark with a ruler the lines for the basket. After cutting their lines, they were ready to weave. When the basket was finished, they cut the corners off the bottom of the basket to make it rounded. The basket was glued to a piece of 12x18 white paper. At first I used real apples and paint, but it didn't work out so well so I eventually had the students use crayons to draw their apples. You could also use tracers or have them cut apples out of construction paper. Note: the weaving takes longer than expected!!!