the idea: make a story out of Japanese symbols drawn with sumi ink

I’ve been doing a lot of classes on Ancient Greek, Rome, and Egypt in my off-site after school groups recently.  However there is one boy who has repeatedly asked to look at Asian art.  I haven’t taught as much from the Asian art section of the MFA, apart from the dragons and the Chinese horses which we tend to use a lot.  As I looked through the examples and materials we have I found the sumi ink.

Before this week I had only taught with sumi ink once and that was when I was assisting instead of leading the lesson.  But I pulled out all the supplies, made a little example, and went to the after school class.  The children were very interested in the Chinese and Japanese symbols I brought, especially after we read the Pet Dragon by Christoph Niemann.  So for the past two days I’ve spent my afternoons practicing Japanese characters with my students, something I very rarely did no matter how many times my older sister asked when she was first studying Japanese.