Ancient Chinese Fireworks Craft

In third grade in Virginia, one of the biggest (and most fun) units that we teach in social studies is about ancient civilizations. We study Ancient China, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, and Ancient Greece. The kids love learning about these cultures! They are fun to teach too because each place is interesting and unique! At the end of the unit we get to compare and contrast these cultures and use all that we've learned to create some fun projects. 

This is an example of one of the projects that we did in class to enhance our study of Ancient China. One of the Ancient Chinese contributions was that they invented fireworks. 

We used pipe cleaners, paint, plastic plates and construction paper to create these firework paintings. I took about 4 pipe cleaners and bent them in half. I twisted one side of the halves to make a handle and then put out each individual pipe cleaner at the bottom to create a pointed 'star' shape. We used the twisted pipe cleaners as a handle and dipped the 'star' shape onto the plastic plates, each one with different color of paint. I chose to only use red, blue, yellow, and white so that when the colors mixed, there would not be any yucky, neutral grays or browns. As more students created the project, the paint colors mixed but that made it look even better! 

This project went well with our Ancient China unit, but it could also be used to celebrate Chinese New Year! Students really enjoyed getting to use paint outside of the art classroom and making something so beautiful! You can see that some are simple and some chose to make more complex designs! 

This idea is all over Pinterest - I did not come up with it, I just found a way to incorporate it into what we were learning. :)

Love & Sparkles,

Miss Jones