For the Five Strands of the New York City Blueprint for the Arts;

#3 Making connections. This art project links to Social Studies, and the greater understanding of the rich Chinese heritage in New York. Students will gain an understanding of the Chinese characters they see all over the city.

#4 Community and Cultural Resources. There are several museums where excellent examples of calligraphy can be seen starting with the China Institute, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Chinese in America, and the Asia Society.

#5 Careers and Lifelong learning. China continues to be a world power especially economically. Students who develop an understanding of China, its language and its writing will have an advantage in the corporate world. Many American companies have opened offices in Beijing in the past few years IBM and Hearst publishing just to name two.

In older literature, Chinese characters in general may be referred to as ideograms, due to the misconception that characters represented ideas directly, whereas in fact they do so only through association with the spoken word.

The Chinese have been writing for over 3,500 years. We figure this out by looking at Chinese bronzes that are 3,500 years old and they have writing on them. The writing has full grammar and the writing is consistent. By that we can surmise they didn’t wake up that morning and invent making bronze and creating writing, but that they had been writing for quite some time, perhaps on silk or bamboo slips that have rotted away over the years.

Upper grades; Worksheets will have many more and more complex characters so they can create a ‘Poem”. Poems don’t have to rhyme.

For more Chinese characters, look up websites such as www.chinasona.org. It will translate, give you the characters, and you can click on the speaker to hear it.

Examples;
Five books=五书
Wǔ běn shū (literally, 5 volumes of books)五本书
Five blessings=五福
Wǔfú línmén 五福临门

Writing was first started on strips of bamboo, this is why it was vertically written. Today in modern China you can also read it from left to right. Zhou En Lai was instrumental in not only simplifying characters and cutting out many of the extra strokes but also introduced the writing to be left to right.

In Chinese there are lots of homophones. “blessings or luck” is the same sound but not the same character as the animal, the bat. If you receive a gift with 5 bats on it they are telling you they wish you to have 5 blessings. The 5 blessings are, longevity, wealth, health, love of virtue, and a peaceful death.

Chinese characters should be able to fit in a square box. You can create a worksheet of boxes and run them off on the copier or have the students use a ruler to create their own. Practice first with a pencil to get the angle and number of strokes correct. Depending on the age of the students, match the age to the number of times they practice it. If they are 8 years old, have them do it 8 times.

After that they can use a black marker, or if you have brushes that come to a point, not the squared off kind, do it with black paint and a brush.

Calligraphers usually hold the brush straight up and down but because we don’t teach writing that way, it might be difficult to get them get that correct. If the brush is held at an angle, the strokes will become too broad. If that were the case, then having them use markers or pens would be better.

Traditionally you start by writing from top to bottom, left to right.

For our art project we can add colored tissue paper.

Session 1; Water down some white glue in a little dish. The consistency should be like thin ketchup. Tear or cut pieces of color tissue paper. If they are more advanced they can create the shapes to coincide with the characters they are writing.
Brush on the watered down glue on white paper. Lay down the tissue and again brush the watery glue on top. Let it dry for the next session. Meanwhile, they can practice their calligraphy.

Session 2; Now that the paper is dry, write your characters on top with black paint and a brush.

• 1. Character is not in a squared off space, strokes don’t seem attached enough to be one character.
• 2. Character is in a squared off space, strokes are not random but cohesive and creating a character, but not centered.
• 3. Character is squared off, centered and shows a lively use of the brush or marker, not stiff.
• 4. Character is cohesive, uses strong use of strokes, centered and squared off, use of color tissue paper overlaps.

Did they experiment with several characters? Did they try to hold the brush straight up? Did they remember the character they chose? Did they try to keep it in a square?