3rd grade Japanese Scrolls

These Japanese scrolls turned out beautifully and were created by my 3rd grade students during the last few weeks of school. I was inspired by a post I saw over at Use Your Coloured Pencils blog. Because of the nature of the materials we used, the process was slow going, meaning we could only do a few steps each week, some lasting only minutes, but the results are spectacular!

Day #1: Students traced a lid anywhere onto a piece of 8x12 white paper and then painted the rest of the space using a combination of (teacher-selected) analogous colors (the color scheme I liked best was yellow, green and blue).

Day #2: Students used watercolors or chalk to create a 3-dimensional moon (or sun). While that was drying, they used black watercolor, oil pastel or sharpie to create a tree branch (I taught them to start with a wobbly looking letter "Y" and build upon it by adding lots of smaller lines anywhere). The last step for the day was to paint or draw a Japanese symbol somewhere on the paper (I selected the words, "spring, tree and nature" and had the symbols on a sheet for students to view).

Day #3: I introduced students to cherry blossom trees and we talked about its history and features and how many petals are on each flower. Students painted the blossoms onto the tree branch using pre-mixed tempera paint.

Day #4: Students added the center (stigma) of the cherry blossoms using a sharpie. When finished, I used a hot glue gun to attach wooden skewers to the top and bottom to make it look like an old scroll. Students tied on a piece of string if desired.