Mail Art + Pen Friends = Dear You Art Project
Look what arrived today! The kids were so excited to see the rhythmic paintings from South Africa! We have them all displayed proudly in our classroom!
The 4 year old Puppies from Just Kids in Hanoi, Vietnam are making and sharing art with the 3-6 year olds at Oakdale Montessori School in Cape Town, South Africa.
We enjoyed creating our abstract painting, without using a brush, while listening to music. We were unable to walk around and find natural items to paint with so I put out drinking straws, Q-tips, and wooden popsicle sticks to paint with. We listened to the music then I demonstrated a few ways to use our new painting tools. The children had a fun time listening to the music and painting.
Kathleen Finan
The 2nd graders at Amy Parks Heath Elementary School in Heath, Texas are making and sharing with the 1st and 2nd graders at Grunnskóli Fjallabyggðar in Siglufjörður, Iceland.
Lamees, the teacher in the classroom introduced the project during circle time while discussing the weather. We stopped and heard a bit of wind. I asked if they could hear it. We described it as the wind was crashing against the classroom. I told the children instead of using paint brushes, what else can they find in the garden and the first thing they went to was the trees. The colors of the week are green and yellow so we kept in with our theme.
The children were asked to go out into the school grounds and have a look to see what materials they could use / find which are different to what we would normally use in the classroom environment. The children looked around and
brought back pegs, sticks, leaves, twigs from around the school property and instead of using normal powder paint they decided to use food colouring.
The children loved the new and different way of painting and had a ball with the different leaves and colors.
My Toddler Class this morning decided that they also wanted to be included in the latest art project, so we let them experiment. The children in the Toddler class range in age from 19 months to 3 years of age.
Regards,
Tayla
The 3-6 year olds at Oakdale Montessori School in Cape Town, South Africa are making and sharing art with the Tigers, 4-5 year olds from Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.
WOW! What a great art project! The children absolutely loved this project and they produced some wonderful pieces that showed their thoughts and feelings from the music.
We started off this project by closing our eyes and listening to some music. I chose Simply Three's instrumental version of Avicii's Wake me up.
I chose this song because it has some clear layers of music that will attract different students. I also chose an instrumental song because English lyrics might be too difficult for us at this stage.
After listening to the song once, i replayed it and we broke down all the different parts of the song. The beats, the high pitched violin and the deep base sounds and we started to draw on the whiteboard what we think those sounds looked like.
A very popular response was spotting on the board to the beat, and doing swirls and waves to the melody.
What about the colour? What colour does it sound like? Blue? Green? Red??
Now it was our turn to paint! We had a range of medium to paint with. We had paintbrushes-thick and thin, chop sticks, cardboard toilet rolls, scrunched up paper and tissue.
Then the music started again and we were ready to go. The children were so eager, some starting with their spotty beats and others making rainbow waves. We had circles, we had lines, we had swirls and we even had some happy faces.
We played the music a number of times until all the children had finished their painting. Some even did 2 or 3 paintings, which are now proudly displayed in our classroom.
What a wonderful art project that the children really enjoyed.
Love as always to our friends in South Africa and Finland!
Teacher Steph, the Tiger Cubs and the Puppies.
The 4 year old Puppies from Just Kids in Hanoi, Vietnam are making and sharing art with the artist Tigers at Your School in Espoo, Finland. The 4 year old Tigers at Just Kids are making and sharing art with the 3-6 year olds at Oakdale Montessori School in Cape Town, South Africa.
Below are photographs from the workshop with the Tiger Cubs.
Below are pictures from the workshop with the Puppies.
First we were all surprised, interested, curious and sometimes even scared of the paintings we saw: M. C. Escher, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and other surrealist painters, which made us think a little bit and also realize that painting has no boundaries.
Then, we started painting to Jun Miyake's "Lillies of the Valley". The storm, No teacher, Windy day, The tree, Flowers, Birds of Vietnam or the galaxy are some of the paintings we created. Take a look and you will find much more.
All the best from Hanoi,
The Little Mice
The Little Mice are exchanging with the Tigers in Espoo, Finland. Check out what The Tigers did for their Musical Paintings here!
Hello!
I'm sending you the first pictures of our music-project.
On the left side of the sheets you can see the impressions inspired by Edvard Grieg, Morning Mood. On the right side you can see what children did to the music from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Summer, Presto (The Thunderstorm). Some of them really fell into the music. :)
It was interesting to notice that nearly all children had the same feelings. Morning mood is smooth and clear. A lot of them started to paint with the colour green; they painted nature and "good" things like music, birds - happiness and peace.
Vivaldi's Thunderstorm is very rude and disturbing. They had the feeling of death and threat in different forms like a house is burning or someone is crying for help. Also, bad people are in the pictures.
THANKS A LOT for your candies! We had a lot of fun opening your present and tasting the candies! In Austria we don't eat liquorice, just a few people like it (like me). But the caramel candy and the chocolat were great! They loved it!*
Its always a great moment for the children to get a parcel from far away. We loved the stamps from Finland and the children did not allow me to destroy the paper around the parcel. ;)
Winter and Christmas is coming in Vienna...
Best wishes!!
Simone
*The artists in Vienna, Austria are exchanging with the artists in Vantaa, Finland.
"Look! The girls are dancing ballet!" a boy from The English School in Helsinki hollers. We're listening to music and some of us are feeling courageous enough to take a step or sway to the beat and melody. The song changes from an old school video game theme to more classical tunes. "A trip to Paris!" a girl says. "An afternoon playing games with my friends." "All of us as video game characters are inside the game!" another artist sees in her mind's eye.
The music stops and it's on to painting! The images inspired by the songs and our dance start appearing on paper in wonderful colors. The paintings tell of dreams, travels and time with friends.
Music is like a key. And different kinds of music equals to lots of different keys to lots and lots of unique worlds! I wonder what sort of doors will our Dear You friends open for us in Praque?
- Nooralotta Ikonen
http://laiskia.blogspot.fi
ps. If you would like to hear what we made our paintings to please click here and here.
Lusine, the teacher at Kita Felix and Friends in Berlin said, "the kids had a lot of fun, many painted with music, letting the beat be the guiding light." I'm sure their friends in Lasteaed Illikuku in Põlvamaa, Estonia are super excited to receive their musical paintings!
Hello Dears!
We have had so much fun and a nice time with our Dear You Art project and music paintings/drawings this week! Our kids listened in their own "small groups" different kind of music from Finnish classical to folk (specially our own national instrument Kantele) and world music (pop) between. And surely they were enjoying a lot also listening in peace while making "pictures".
Finally, they finished their work to an end. We discussed different kinds of feelings we had. Children mostly told about feeling happiness, joy, pleasure, good and positive emotions and their being safe! Some had exciting feels and also little bit scary too or at least mystic:... "like some big ship by the sea without knowing what is coming next..." All of them said they could do this again, it was so fun!
Hopefully you have received our big candy present for your kids in Vienna?
Best greetings,
Snowleopards and Anne-Marie
For the November Musical Painting Michelle Mullally, Assistant Director at Moonstone Preschool said, "They got so into it. I love seeing how students respond to music while making art."
The pictures speak for themselves :)
This time at Central Point International Elementary School in Prague we made a visualization of the music project.
I prepared for the students a long sheet of paper and than while we altogether were listening to music, we tried to express what we heard. The aim was not to create separate individual results of our observations, but we wanted to get closer to the idea of listening together and also creating together. That is why we used this kind of paper. All the students at some point disturbed each other's drawing and had to deal with each other's drawing space, which brought new element into our working method. Hopefully our friend school in Helsinki will recognize the energy locked into the piece.
We listened to:
Flight of the Bumblebee
Amelia from Montmartre
Japanese relaxation music
433 John Cage
- Rudolf Samohejl
Art is another form of self expression and today the Tigers taught me a lot about that! We started the session by looking at artists such as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. These two great artists were very much inspired by music. We talked about the kinds of sounds and music we started to hear when we looked at their paintings.
Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944). Composition 8 (Komposition 8), July 1923. Oil on canvas, 55 1/8 x 79 1/8 inches (140 x 201 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Paul Klee, Castle and Sun
Paul Klee, Ancient Sound
Then we listened to some music and hopped along to it to see visually and physically how the rhythm is. We jumped when the tune was high and crept closer to the floor when it was low. After we felt comfortable with the music we shimmied to our drawing tables and started painting away to Schneider TM's song called "Frogtoise" and to Nightmares On Wax song, "Les Nuits". Can you hear the difference through the brushstrokes?
We can't wait to hear what songs our friends in Vietnam created to!
Our bodies react to music sometimes in ways we can't control or foresee. We just have to experience it to believe it! Today we tried to become more aware of why and how that happens. First, we started off by having a dance party to just let our bodies lose and move to the beat. Then we dived into our paints and let our dancing hands guide the brush. The stories created and felt were amazing!
First we listed to Dean Martin's "Let it Snow". The Monkeys will be performing this song for the Christmas play so it was fun to practice it with them.
When The Monkeys listened to Helado Negro's song titled "Invisible Heartbeat" images of ocean with whales and mermaids came swimming into the artists' minds. We got into groups to create collective paintings. Bringing all of our imaginary worlds together and making them come to life is always exciting!
How do you move, what do you see, how do you feel when you hear certain songs? What music do you hear when you look at the Monkeys' paintings? We are excited to see what our friends in Greenland come up with!
