Mapping the sounds from Germany to UAE

As part of the process, the class made a map of sounds!

This project was a bit difficult for me to conceptualize and present in an easy-to-understand manner. Because English is not the mother tongue of most of my kids, I thought they would have a hard time "picturing" what sound looks like. But I did my best and gave the children fingerpaint and let them go wild. 

To my surprise, many of them "got it" and what looked like colorful messes had a logic behind it. One boy in particular, who many describe as older than his 4 years, told me which colors corresponded to the quiet and nosy times of our day at the kindergarten. Pink is quiet, like our lunch time. But our morning circle is blue because it is loud. Green is quiet with some loud times. 

The surface that I gave the children to paint on was plain white paper with a pair of ears on the left and right side. They all recognized the ears and some painted the entire surface with wild abandon, while other concentrated on decorating the ears first and then coloring the empty space between them. 

When all the pieces were finished, I wanted something that would show the thought process of the children individually and the class as a whole. So I decided to create a map of the world and use the children's artwork to create a patchwork of the continents. Each patch was clearly marked with the child's name, so that they could find it on the map. The boy I spoke about earlier applied his color logic to the map and theorized that different areas of the world must be quiet or loud according to the color of the patches used. 

Sounds around us!

This is how we see the sounds that surround us at different times of the day, month, year, our life. It is interesting to see the children becoming aware of and discovering the surrounding sounds. They talked about sounds they hear at night in their houses. Some of the sounds looked like tornado. They described and wondered about the sound of a falling star. They pictured the sounds at school, the school bus, and the sound of the quiet time before bed to create their triptychs.

Great conversations and lots of fun!

Thank you,
Dance A. Vasileska

Вот так мы видим звуки, которые окружают нас в разное время дня, месяца, года и нашей жизни. Интересно наблюдать, как дети начинают обращать внимание и открывать для себя звуки вокруг. Они говорили о звуках, которые слышат ночью у себя дома. некоторые напоминали торнадо. Они описали и попытались представить себе звук падающей звезды. На триптихах они изобразили звуки в школе, в школьном автобусе и тихие звуки вокруг перед сном. 

Спасибо,
Dance A. Vasileska

The 4th graders from Ryerson Public School in Cambridge, Canada are making and sharing art with the 10 years olds from Kepa School in Karelia, Russia. 

Dynamic Dinosaurs sound their surroundings!

Happy Spring Everyone!

We are happy to share our “Sounding our Surroundings” products with us! We enjoyed collecting some leaves before we start to it. Then we focused on sounds we hear while we are sitting or playing in the garden.

After that we started our Project at the tables and try to focus on sounds around us. When we hear noise we preferred to paint fast, when we hear quite sounds we paint slow.

We also change our painting styles depending on sound level too. Such as some of us painted more circular when it is noisy and painted straight lines when it is quiet.

We enjoyed painting with the leaves and we hope you’ll like them as much as we do!

Warm regards,
Dynamic Dinosaurs. 

The 4-5 year old Dynamic Dinosaurs from Açi Preschool in Istanbul, Turkey are making and sharing art with the artists from Praxis School in Mysore, India.

Dance party in Hanoi, inspired by Cape Towners!

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.

Sounding our Little Forest "Pikku Metsa"

Sounding our surrounding meeting went real well, thanks to classroom teachers Titta and Anne, who had taken their young artists for an explorative walk in a little forest literally called Little Forest "Pikku Metsa" beforehand. From the walk, the kids brought natural materials for making brushes, as well as many interesting sounds to paint. We chatted about the difference in soundscapes in the school and outside in nature, as well as about composing music, as we painted our songs.

A lot of time was deliberately left for reflection and performance of the scores. To get into the musical mood, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was performed skillfully by both groups - in Finnish and in English languages.

In 1A we each described what we heard and how we decided to combine and express these sounds on paper. In 1B we sang, hummed, tapped and whistled our own and each other's paintings.

It was lovely to hear, a teacher noted, how now, after 3 meeting, the kids already started to respond to me in English (Viertola is a Finnish - speaking school, but I speak English to the kids). Nice to see how Dear You can be not only a way to make art and meet new friends, but to learn a language also. 

Anastasia Artemeva

Below are photos from Titta's 1A class:

Below are photos from Anne's 1B class:

The 1A artists at Viertolan Koulu in Vantaa, Finland are making and sharing art with the artists at Кепа школу (Kepa School) in Karelia, Russia. The 1B artists at Viertolan Koulu in Vantaa, Finland are making and sharing art with the artists at Sheppard Public School in Ontario, Canada.