Craft Idea for The Magic Brush

This weekend's 2nd grade book is The Magic Brush: A Story of Family, Love, and Chinese Characters. Just like Jasmine's Agong (Grandfather) taught her, you can teach your class how to write Chinese characters! It's really simple, Chinese characters are all about writing with the correct stroke order. Let's take a few of the characters from the book...

Steps to "Friend":

1. Starting from the top, make a curved line downwards.

2. Without lifting your pen/pencil, starting from the top of Step 1, draw a horizontal line from the left to the right and then downwards. Be sure to make a hook at the end!

3. From left to right, draw a line connecting the 2 sides.

4. Draw a second line underneath the first.

5. Repeat the Steps 1-4 to the right and together you have "Friend"!

**Don't forget! With just one side, you have the Chinese character for "moon".

Steps to "Star"

1. First make the box-like character on the upper part of the entire

character. Start with simply making a short line starting from the top.

2. Just like Step 2 of "friend", without lifting your pen/pencil, draw a horizontal line from the left to the right and then downwards. No hook this time!

3. Finish off the box by making a horizontal line (from left to right) in the middle of the box and then closing it (left to right again) at the bottom.

4. To begin the lower part of the character, make a short curved line to the right of the box, starting from the top again, and then draw a horizontal line from it.

5. Draw a shorter line under the first line, make sure it is in the center of the first line.

6. Finish it off by drawing a vertical line from the box through the lines and then closing it off with one more horizontal line

Now you have "star"!