Chinese Fan

One of the themes I use in my class is art from around the world. This is a way I introduce students to different cultures around the world and different ways art is seen around the world. With my third year students we worked on a Chinese fan inspired by traditional Chinese fans. Students learned about the cultural importance of fans in China and who used them and why they used them. Then we looked at traditional flower paintings from China and we used them as our inspiration as we drew flowers on our red and white paper. Students learned how to make a pattern out of and image and drawing it all over their paper. Once they were done drawing students traced over their drawings with ink. When the ink dried, students cut each paper in half and folded each paper into a fan. Once all the pieces were folded they glued them together and I hot glued a Popsicle stick to the bottom of the fan so it could stay open.