China: The Five Constant Relationships Collage

The Five Constant Relationships
A collage Activity

Religion: Confucianism

Purpose: to reinforce and test familiarity with the five constant relationships of Confucian philosophy

Cognitive Skills: application, analysis

Learning Styles: visual, sensing

Intelligences: visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal

Use: in classroom, as homework

For: individuals, pairs, small groups

Estimated time: 15 - 30 minutes (though reflective and global thinkers might want to take more time as they think about and stumble across images as they go about their daily life)

Materials needed: paper or poster board, glue, scissors, old magazines, junk mail ads, clip art and other sources for images, marker(s) to label posters (ribbon, yarn, or colorful tape optional).

Note: can be done in front of the TV, or listening to music

The Activity:

Use a different piece of paper for each of the five relationships.
Locate images of pairs or groups of people representing the five different relationships identified by Confucius (if you don't recall what these five are, review your reading or lecture notes). In this case, the related people should appear together in the same picture. Students can be encouraged to find images of relationships that are part of their own life (ruler-subject might be interpreted as boss-worker, a dog & master - be creative)
Group and paste images representing each relationship onto the papers.
Label each collection of images with the appropriate relationship
Five pages total, each displaying a different relationship. You may want to connect the pages in some way - e.g., by linking them together using ribbon.

Alternative possibilities: any topic which lends itself to categories (such as kinds of animals, things associated with various countries or famous people, historical time periods, etc.)