Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Japanese Haiku and Cherry Blossom Art

Yesterday afternoon we reviewed syllables and how they are used in haiku poetry. Levi then wrote his haiku about cherry trees/blossoms and then we did the art project to go with it. He blew India ink onto white paper, trying to make something that would resemble tree branches. After it dried he added little tufts of tissue paper for the blossoms. This morning he wrote out the haiku with a quill pen and India ink. This was no easy feat because the quill pen he bought has a very fine point and it sure got hung up on the paper; he managed to get a pretty good copy after some practice.

Fluffy cherry trees
Covered in bright pink and white
Colorful blossoms.


Here are the links to some blogs that featured this project. They all used paints for their blossoms, but I liked the 3-D effect with the tissue paper.

Blowing India ink across a piece of paper with a straw is NOT as easy as it sounds. It frequently forms a big bubble which then bursts, spraying you and the surroundings with little black ink spots. Levi had lots of black freckles last night. I chose to wash all mine off so as not to embarrass Cole when I went to a meeting at his high school. I don't know if there are any particular tricks to this, none of the blogs seemed to mention any, leaving me with the impression that this would just be a piece of cake. We had some good laughs as we worked!

I also wrote some cherry blossom haiku poetry.

Trees all dressed in pink,
Their blooms float down to the earth.
Look! I see pink snow.


Beautiful pink trees
Covered in bright blossoms,
Telling us it's spring.

Looking forward to the blossoming of the trees here in Oregon. For now we are expecting some rare snow in the next day or so. Kids are praying for the closure of school and a day to play out in the snow. If it does snow I hope it amounts to enough to actually sled on.

Sharon

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