Chinese paper-cutting games.

In China, paper cutting is valued as a traditional folk art. There are a variety of paper cuttings that are fairly easy to do, even for very young students. Kids really love this activity because it is like playing a game with paper and scissors.

However, simple playing is not enough. We want students to learn the skills and enjoy the art of paper cutting while playing. The question is how to teach the subject well. After several years of teaching, I developed a "playful teaching method" for paper cutting. Let's look at a first grade art class to see how they learned the technique of paper cutting.

Finding the Hidden Pictures

Here is an example of what I said to my class during this lesson: "Two treasures belong to human beings: our brains and our hands. Pick up your scissors. Today you will use your hands and your brain."

I told the class, "We are going to learn how to cut out a design with clusters of flowers." Students were eager to get started as soon as they saw my examples. I said, "Let's play a game called Finding the Hidden Pictures. Please compare these flowers with these other paper cuttings. What's the difference between them? If you will look carefully, you will find out their secrets."

The students examined the flower paper cuts carefully. Soon small hands were raised high, eager to tell the "secrets" they had found. It is very important to teach them how to attain the key skills, such as keeping the paper cuts connected. This is the hardest part of the lesson. I use a method I call "connecting the center while separating the two sides" to solve the problem.

Little Ants Going for a Walk

To help students understand how to keep the paper connected when cutting a design into it, I made a game of "little ants going out for a walk."

I folded a square of paper in half and then half again and placed it on the projector screen. I made a pencil mark at the end of one folded edge (away from the folded center and said, "Look! There is a black point from the pencil tip. Doesn't it look like an ant? The ant is going to take a walk on my folded paper." The students watched, wondering how an ant took a walk and where it was going.

I drew a curved arch from the "ant" to the middle of the folded paper and made another "ant" there. I said "Another ant also wants to go for a walk with the first one." While saying this, I drew another curved arch to the end of the opposite folded edge. I cut along the lines that showed the ants' paths, and then opened up the paper.

As I unfolded it, the kids expressed their delight. Then I showed how they could draw the lines ants would take walking away from the folded edge and then back to where they started. The students quickly started to work. All the resulting paper cuts were connected as in my example.

Through such games, students enjoy the happiness of learning and success, and their abilities improve as they play the games. In art class, we can use games to make our teaching more appealing. Students can play while they learn and learn while they play, fully experiencing the joy of the classroom.

NATIONAL STANDARD

Students use visual structures and functions of art to communicate ideas.

WEB LINK

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_paper_art

Fang Fang is an art teacher at the Peking University Allied Elementary School in Beijing, China. [e-mail], [e-mail]