Chinese New Year

Throughout all my experiences, one thing remains constant: kids love scratch art. It doesn't matter what the subject matter is, there's just something ultimately appealing about scratching away at a black surface to reveal the 'hidden' colors underneath. Now I don't have the budget to buy pre-made scratch art, so it's a good thing I'm a d DIY kind of gal and just had the kids color and paint their own. I will say though, in the realm of knowing when quality is a must, that in order to make successful scratch art you need to work off of heavyweight paper. I had medium grade white drawing paper and heavier weight watercolor paper (both of which I tried on) and the watercolor paper working exponentially better than the regular white paper. For the subject matter we examined the Chinese New Year and discussed the differences between American traditions and Chinese traditions. I spent 2 sessions using guided practice to show them how to draw a tiger, first we used white erase boards, then they practiced on their own using sloppy copy paper. When they felt ready I gave them a small square of scratch paper to practice on and then they went onto their large paper. To finish off the lesson I had the kids use a bunch of scrap white strips I had saved and glue them into a frame, then collage the frame with tissue paper. I finished it off by varnishing it, so all the tissue paper was secure and used packing tape to adhere the scratch art tiger behind the frame. We ended the lesson by completing a Venn diagram on the differences/similarities between U.S New Year traditions and Chinese New Year traditions. It was a really great lesson and I think the kids really enjoyed it!