Mail Art + Pen Friends = Dear You Art Project
Toti and The Mice wanted to mix colors and do some a4 christmas cards for the Tigers using Salt Painting. Learn more about this art technique here:
http://www.oneperfectdayblog.net/2012/04/27/kids-art-raised-salt-painting/
The Mice and The Tigers met up online to sing 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas' together!
Once The Tigers mastered the art of making a pop up box everything became possible! Nachu was experimenting with writing her name in cursive. Jonatan made a pop up reindeer. Sreya said she wanted to give the sun to her friends in Vietnam. That's so thoughtful considering Finland could really use some right about now :). Ida went beyond the twofold card and made a pop up book!
The Tigers will mail these warm wishes to the Mice in Vietnam. Hyvää Joulua and Happy New Year!
The last session in Meilahti started off a bit differently than the others before it. I had a special guest: Arlene, the founder of Dear You workshops was there with me to tell about her latest installation piece. So we plunged to the world of installations and scratched the surface of performance art with a seasoned guide.
The outcome of the workshop was creative as always! We got a taste of Du Champ -style piece called Pen on the Floor, a miniature Pollock, Magic tricks of expectations, surprise performative art and framings and of course the Illuminati had it's hands on this workshop too.
We discovered that art is dialogue, a process where we interpret each other. Sometimes we get the gist of things and sometimes we get lost in translation but that's okay. No matter the distance we can always try to reach out to understand and find our horizons being broadened in the process. It's art when you call and treat is as such!
Using some of the words that the Dear You Artist in Meilahti mentioned, all in all we had a fun, new and magical ride on our Dear You journey!
- Nooralotta Ikonen
http://laiskia.blogspot.fi
Do you know how to play the guitar, do the baby freeze or do you just know really much about ice hockey? I surely don't but the talented fifth graders in Helsinki English School know!
This time at The English School we looked at our gifts. We pondered about how can we give them as presents to our friends. The word present has two meanings: one is something you give away and the other one is something you receive right at every moment, at the present. So a gift in it's most heartfelt way is you being present to the people around you. That means everyone of us can give a special gifts this Christmas by just being present and using the talents we have.
Some of us had a hard time seeing our own talent. But we needn't worry too much! Help was always near when friends cheered on at how good someone was at so many things. Sometimes we can't see our own talents because to us they're just everyday things while to others they might be a wonder. If you know how to do something really well, you might just need a reminder now and again from your friends on how good you actually are! We drew our talents in the stars that we sent to Prague and hope that they'll bring at least as much cheer there as we experienced when making them.
This gift giving doesn't have to stop at Christmas. We can all use our gifts and talents, no matter how small we think they are, every day and bring cheer and ease to others around us.
Let's have a gift filled Christmas and a talented new year!
- Nooralotta Ikonen
http://laiskia.blogspot.fi
Hello,
We have Christmas Holidays now and have been busy organizing happenings, presents and so on here in Vantaa, Finland. Thank you Simone and kids for your lovely posts. The kids got all those drawings you made!! They were so grateful and happy about that! This week we made a little surprise for your Christmas ... hope you will get it soon!
And there are also pics from our Party Room. We had a Winter theme where everyone could use their 5 senses.
Beautiful holidays to you all and Merry Christmas.
Love from Snowleopards and Anne-Marie
The Monkeys in Espoo, Finland were so happy to receive artwork in the mail from their friends in Nuuk, Greenland! We read each other's letters and messages.
Learning more about our friends gave us great ideas on how to make our Pop Up Holiday Cards. Since Leon's friend liked football, he decided to draw him a spotted football greeting card. Ella wanted to ask her friend questions about the painting she received. Ella wondered, "what animal did Misu draw? I think Minea's friend will surely like the surprise cat she made! hint: meow :)
Dear You,
Last workshop of this year was also my last contribution to this project. As you could sense all around the Panda Learning Center, Christmas are everywhere and I wanted to set up the workshop in this mood. I wanted to create a calm and peaceful atmosphere and to have time to chat with the students. This time we used just markers, scissors and blank white A4 paper. During the workshop we talked about Christmas time and what we would like to give to the students from Finland, which was really fun and I hope that you are going to see it soon. The biggest source for us was the licorice world, which we all remember from one of the the previous workshop in which we received pictures of licorice candies from Finland.
In the end, I especially wanted to thank my students for their intense attitude and high quality outcomes, also thanks to stuff of Panda Learning Center for providing me warm words and lunch, students from Finland for their funny letters and last but not least to Arlene Tucker coordinator of this project for patience and trust to give me space and time within Dear You project.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Prague
Veselé Vánoce a šťastný nový rok z Prahy
- Rudolf Samohejl
