Chinese Wood Block Printing

As we have worked our way through another chapter in our Story of the World book, we discussed some contributions the Chinese have made to civilization. After reading about wood block printing we went ahead and did a mock printing craft that they had a lot of fun with.

First we drew simple pictures on cardboard and then layed glue soaked yarn on the pictures.

After letting it dry overnight, we coated a paper plate with paint. I used a paintbrush to try to get an even surface for them to press their yarn pictures into. When you press your yarn down on the paint, you have to make sure the yarn was covered with the paint. Seems obvious but the kids didn't really get it until they saw the negative space on their cardboard with paint and then it sort of ruins their design.

After talking about monks, monasteries, scriptoriums and letter illumination, they got the fact that wood block printing was much more efficient to mass produce written text.