Looking for some inexpensive and fun crafts or activities for your students to learn about Ancient China?

I love crafts. I am a crafting junkie. However, between testing, writing, reading, science, social studies, and math… it can be tough to fit it into the curriculum. We have a fairly strict social studies curriculum at my gifted school I teach at. For social studies, the kids do a lot of analyzing primary source documents and essay writing. Critical thinking and analyzing is a great skill- but where’s the fun Ancient China learning? These crafts help add some spark and fun into the unit!

So turn on some Ancient China music (thanks, YouTube!) and break into some Ancient Chinese fun in your classroom! Here are two of my favorite activities that my students enjoy, and I know your students will as well!

PORCELAIN PLATES
We did this craft last Friday on a whim. We had to test the entire morning, and I w

as in the mood for some fun! While the kids were at lunch, I stopped in the art room and grabbed blue and black tempura paint. I have a boatload of paper plates, so that made it easy as well. One of my fellow teammates had lots of paintbrushes. Ta-da, porcelain painting time! The kids made neat plates and LOVED doing this! Good-old painting is so relaxing. We had a mini lesson on the arts of the Ancient Chinese, put a few examples on the SmartBoard, and the kiddos got to work.

































































CHINESE LANTERNS

 How adorbs are these Chinese lanterns?? I used a template from a teammate, but they are easy to make with normal paper, scissors, and glue! All kids need to do is decorate their lantern. Then, simply fold the paper in half, cut some slits, glue the paper together, and make a handle! If that description is confusing, take a peek at some YouTube videos to watch how they are created. Here is a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeZKYGmuZn0 












Need more resources for Ancient China? Check out some of my interactive notebooks and worksheets!



4 Responses

  1. I wish we were doing China as part of curriculum this year. I love all of your social studies resources! They are so cute!

  2. China definitely is a fun unit! I love fitting in crafts whenever I can – I am a crafting addict 🙂

  3. Seal script(篆书): Chinese character was born before Qin Dynasty. Archeologist took the research on Chinese characters and ascertained the Oracle Bones scripts used for auspicating the unexpected future. But it has possessed the basic elements of China’s calligraphy has. During the time of Yin and Zhou, the bronze inscriptions were widely popularized. After the unification of Qin Dynasty, it was called to be the small seal script as the official character style used in the normalized documents. ,and generally used in recording a merit onto the stones , Tiger Tallies, a special two-piece object granted to officers, used for military authentification or authority. For instance, when a general wants to dispatch a troop from certain, he probably has to show one piece of the tiger tally to the camp officer. The camp officer will in turn show his own piece of tiger tally and both pieces must match each other in order for command of dispatching/processing to go through. Generally speaking, seal script could be fractionized into large-size seal script and small-size seal script. The major representative was Li Si
    I liked your blog, Take the time to visit the me and say that the change in design and meniu?