A Watercolor Rabbit for Chinese New Year

If you want exactly proportioned Chinese Characters, this is not the place, but if you want a little craft that may help kids remember a Chinese Character, this rabbit may be it.

2011 is the Chinese Year of the Rabbit, so I thought writing the Character for Rabbit painted with watercolors like a rabbit might be fun.

I've given the order of strokes for Rabbit in Chinese here. There are 8. Following the correct order is great, but this is just for acquainting children with the Character, so perfection is not my goal.

The pronunciation is "tu" similar to the English "to" as in "Me to!" With great emphasis on "to" for the down tone. And yes, I do believe trying to pronounce the tones is important even if the proportions in my Characters aren't perfect.

After I had practiced the order of the strokes a few times, I wrote it in crayon. I used a cotton swab and watercolor paint to make the shape of the rabbit over the Character. After the paint had dried, I drew a face with marker.