3rd Grade Japanese Cherry Blossom Trees

My 3rd grade students are currently learning about Japanese art. They most recently painted cherry blossom trees. They used eye droppers to drop India ink onto their papers, and then blew through straw to make the ink move across the page. Some of the trees turned out really neat! Most of the students thought blowing the ink across the page was really fun, even though it was hard to control where the ink would go.

The second week on this project, the students painted the flowers. I taught them the double-loaded brush technique, in which they dipped half of the brush it red paint, and the other half in pink paint. The result was two-toned flowers that look 3-dimensional, as if they have a shadow on one side of each petal. I am very happy with the results!