Day 351: Calligraphy Lesson

Now that we have stable power and the storm has passed, we went back to our little Chinese New year week. Today after school, we decided to do a little Chinese calligraphy. 

Or as close to Chinese calligraphy as a white European-descendant Americans can do. 

The point obviously was to show the kids how different writing symbols can be from the American alphabet across the world. We Googled their Chinese Zodiac animals' symbols and practiced them in pencil before the kids used the traditional Chinese painting tool: the black Sharpie, and drew it on paper, and then after I cut it out and stuck it to some red popsicle stick frames I had thrown together while they were "painting". Calen drew the characters for his Zodiac (the Ox) and for this years' Zodiac, the Rooster. Cam also did the Rooster and his Zodiac, the Rabbit.

Afterwards, Cam went off to play but Calen chose to copy down more characters of other Zodiac animals. He really thought it was a fun activity. 

Politically correct bullpoop disclaimer: I'm sure that the Chinese characters we found on Google weren't perfectly accurate. To my defense, I chose the most common answer on the first page of Google Images, assuming that by the "majority rules" theory, it was accurate. I'm sure there's a chance that I taught them how to write "tree", or "carpet", or "gullible American" in Chinese instead. This isn't going on their SAT test. Don't panic. 

 

Cam was strangely good at this. He's better at Chinese than English

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