Japanese Cherry Blossom-Straw Painting

Japanese Cherry Blossom-Straw Painting-

This 2nd grade lesson dealt with cherry blossoms and the meaning behind the flower that is now blooming in Washington DC. We began the lesson by learning about the four different seasons and then learned about the history of cherry blossom trees. We then watched a short documentary on cherry blossom trees and their significance to Japan and Washington. After we saw examples of cherry blossom trees our teacher explained our project for the day. The project was to make cherry blossom scrolls using a blow paint technique. First, we were showed how to fill our straws with water downed paint and instructed us not suck up the paint but rather blow into the straw. We practiced on a spare piece of paper by dripping some paint on the paper and then blew on it with our straws to spread the paint to look like branches. After we got the hang of it we did the same process on a longer piece of paper that was going to be our scroll. When we had created our blow art tree we let it dry and then learned about the appropriate color to paint the flowers for our cherry blossom trees. We mixed a little bit of red paint into some white paint until the paint was a lovely shade a pink. We had a choice of using coke bottles to stamp with paint to create flowers, or use q-tips to make them instead. The cherry blossom composition was complete after we added the flowers. The final step was simply making our artwork look like Chinese scrolls. Gluing popsicle sticks to the bottom and top and added a string to the top created our Chinese scrolls.

The Cherry Blossom is a important symbol to the Japanese people and creating a project around the Japanese symbols would be a great was to add some art history. In an older classroom learning about the traditions and festivities of the Japanese people is a way to extend this project. Creating artwork in honor of the Cherry Blossom festival would be a way to have the students learn the principles of art by having them create cherry blossom trees using line, shape, and lastly value.