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.
What a creative and colourful project this was!
We have learnt so much about ourselves and our friends across the oceans by doing this project. The children were so excited to show off all of their new geographical knowledge. We have marked all of the places we know on a large map, so now we can easily find them.
We remembered all of the projects in this series so far, our masks decorated with skin patterns, our rhythmic paintings using so many painting objects and our food book. Now it's time to combine them all! We started a discussion about our dinner table, and what we need to put on it. Plates, knives and forks, chopsticks? What about under them? We need a beautiful table cloth or placemats. We gathered a range of objects in different shapes and sizes. We found cd's and blocks, triangles and rectangles and squares.
We started by choosing one shape and we made some traces with it. Then we chose a second shape and then a third if we wanted. We watched how the lines overlapped and it made different shapes on the inside.
When we were finished it was time to colour! We coloured each section with a different colour. How amazing and bright they looked with all these beautiful colours.
When we were finished we all looked at each other's and tried to put them together to make one big table cloth, but we decided that it was much more exciting if each guest at our international dinner table had a different piece of art under their plate.
The children have absolutely loved being a part of the Dear You project. Now as the little Tiger cubs and Puppies graduate their last year in kindergarten, they enter big school with knew knowledge of cultures, geography, creativity and wonder.
Thank you for letting us be a part of this project and we hope to continue work with you in years to come.
Lots of love to our friends overseas,
Teacher Steph, the Tiger Cubs and the Puppies.
Below are pictures from the workshop with the Puppies.
Below are pictures from the workshop with the Tiger Cubs.
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.
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.
WOW! What an interesting project, we learned so much about ourselves and the world around us!
We started by looking around our classroom and noticing some repeated patterns around us. Particularly during the winter months, we can experiment with some interesting and wonderful patterns on our clothes.
Then we decided to go a little deeper, and we got some magnifying glasses and started looking at our skin. The wrinkles, the lines, the hairs. How interesting we are! What about our friends, what do their faces look like?? What happens when we pull funny faces?? when we raise our eyebrows??
Remembering what we saw, we got straight onto making our masks. we remembered the lines, the spots, the hairs and we made our masks with the patterns from our skin. But of course we had to add some colour! I hope our friends in Finland and our new friends in South Africa enjoy our masks!
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.
Look what came today! The kids were very excited to check it all out! And were very intrigued with their inventions!
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 is starting a new friendship with the K1 artists at International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland. Exciting!!
The kids, as usual were very eager to start creating their next project. We remembered the amazing things we have made already. First we made a friend, then we had to make a house for that friend, then we needed a place for the house... now, how will our friend get around?
Will they walk? or..drive?... or fly?!
We had many ideas of transport that our imaginary friends could travel by. Cars, trains, buses, trucks, rockets....
I asked the children, so, what makes our things special? whats crazy or different about your train?
"my train is a High speed train!"
"my boat has candy inside!"
"my plane is also a bird!"
"my boat is going to my grandma and grandpa's house!"
So many imaginative ideas, we all had a great time playing with shapes and using our creativity.
Dear friends of Finland, we hope you enjoy our art!
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 is starting a new friendship with the K1 artists at International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland. Exciting!!
We got a message from Stephanie Giltrap, the teacher of our Dear You friends in Vietnam, that they have made a display of our artworks at their school. The kids all felt so proud of themselves that they saw their artworks on somebody else's wall. Amazing! Next Tuesday we will be Skyping with them and making another project to mail to them on Thursday. This project titled ‘Let’s Go!’ is about coming up with our own inventions on how to travel to visit our friends in a far away place. Everything is possible!
Love,
Arlene & K1
K1 is a group of 4 year old artists from International School of Helsinki in Finland. They are making and exchanging art with the Tigers, a group of 4 year olds from Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.
The children are so excited to begin the next project! They ask me everyday when we will make something new for our friends in Finland. So bringing this project to them brought on a lot of excitement in the classroom.
I started by drawing a person, and a house and then we started talking about what else we can draw. I was met with suggestions of trees, and a sun and many other things from our environment. We then started a discussion about Finland and what the environment looks like there.
I then showed them 2 videos of Finland. We saw the beautiful long summer days and the long, cold winter nights. We were mesmerised by the beautiful northern lights. "I want to travel to Finland!", "I want to LIVE in Finland!".
So then we discussed what we did see in the videos of the Finnish environment. I showed them their next project and they were very eager to begin. Many stars and lots of snow, hot suns and water for boats. I was getting a lot of comments about the environment they were drawing, so, most of the pictures have small descriptions for our new friends to read. We also had the world map up on display for the children to be reminded of. The kids loved finding some of the new countries they are learning about!
We stuck them all together and followed our environment line from end to end. What a beautiful product!
We hope you enjoy our artwork. It comes with a lot of love!
Teacher Steph, the Tiger Cubs and Puppies.
Below are pictures of the Puppies's Shared Atmosphere collective painting. 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.
Below are pictures of the Tiger Cub's Shared Atmosphere collective painting project. The 4 year old Tiger Cubs at Just Kids are friends with the K1 artists at International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland. Exciting!!
We had the wonderful time Skyping with our friends, Tiger Cubs, in Vietnam. Last month they had made some imaginary friend puppets and posted them to us. The children really engaged in the skype call, thinking of excellent questions to ask their new friends:
A asked, ‘What are your names? Do you like candy?’
Aa asked, ‘Where do you live?’
Dsri asked, ‘Is it hot in Vietnam?’
J asked, ‘Do you play spiderman games?’
W asked, ‘Do you like cake?’ (To this they answered ‘YEEEAAAAHH! we love cake’)
F asked, ‘We have kind and helpful hands, do you?’
They asked us how we say hello in Finnish and what the weather was like here today. We found out that it's warm in Vietnam! And that it's afternoon in Hanoi whereas it was morning in Helsinki. What?! Wow!
Dsri told them that the leaves were falling here so we showed them what it looks like outside of our window. K and A explained how to play the police game. It seems that the Tiger Cubs also like to play the police game! They wondered if we like the minions and told us what they would be dressing up as for halloween! We realised that we have so much in common :).
Soon it will be Halloween! We talked about what we will dress up as. We can't wait to see your costumes, Tiger Cubs!
With love,
K1, Arlene, Lydia, and Bibiana
I introduced the project to my students using a map and a world globe. I spent some time explaining to them about their country, Vietnam and my country, Australia.
I told them that I have some new friends, who are the same age as them and they live in a country called Finland. I told them the name of the class and the name of their school.
I told them that we are going to make a piece of art and then we are going to put it on an airplane to go to our friends in Finland and then we will also get some art from our friends in Finland! They were so excited!
Our first project was about imaginary friends. We discussed things that are real and things that are not real, that are in our heads. They are from our imagination. We spent some time describing our imaginary friends. Are they tall or short, big or small, do they have wings or maybe they can run very fast.
I showed them a puppet that I had made. And explained to them that we can make a puppet that is like the friends we can imagine!
I gave them a small paper bag each and a bunch of other paper and materials to create their puppets. And I left them to it!
I set up the camera and my laptop and I also involved them in the photo taking process. They loved it. A few of them made friends from their imaginations, others made characters that they love. We even have a minion, and an Incredible Hulk!
In the next few months we will be learning about our town. So I will take that opportunity to teach them about the post office when we send our artworks.
The children are so excited to receive their puppets from Finland!
We also look forward to our second project!!
Thanks a lot.
Love from Vietnam,
Steph, the puppies and the tiger cubs.
Below are pictures of the Puppies's Imagine Me puppet!
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 is starting a new friendship with the K1 artists at International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland. Exciting!!
Below are pictures of the Tiger's Imagine Me puppet!
The Tigers impressed me so much not only with their comic strips, but how they can clearly show emotions in their drawn characters! We first made some character studies from one of the characters in their character. For example, since Paavo was the main character in his comic he decided to do a character study of himself. He drew what he looks like happy, sad, nervous, and even drew himself as if he was going to explode from an oversupply of energy!
Everybody did a wonderful job! The Mice in Vietnam will enjoy reading these during their summer holiday too!
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!
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!
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!
