Looking at us through a lens

The artists at Vesalan peruskoulu in Finland are so excited to have new friends in Spain!  We had a good discussion about languages and all the different ways we can communicate.  In the group we have people who speak Finnish, Russian, Arabic, English, and probably many other languages, but we realized that art is a language too!  And today we experimented with using photography as our medium! 

Since this was the first project in getting to know our friends we first thought of things we like about ourselves and characteristics that we would like to share with them.  

Then we experimented with photography!  The characteristics we wanted to highlight guided our camera.  Some of us went outside (in freezing cold weather!) to take the self-portraits while others used different techniques to spread their message such as drawing.  In any case, the final work was a photographic self-portrait.

To round out the session we looked at some self-portraits from Nan Goldin, Josef Koudelka and Zev.  Everybody could share their own perspectives on how that photographic spoke to them.

We look forward to seeing our friend's self-portraits!

The 4th graders at Vesalan Peruskoulu in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with the 5th graders at Escola SOLC in Barcelona, Spain.  Artists in both groups are 10-11 years old.

Experimenting with experience

We experimented with light and shadows of various objects. We used flashlights, daylight, doc. camera light...... Unfortunately, there was no sun today and we couldn't experiment with the sun light. This is what the kids discovered: 

- Shadows appear if there is a source of light. We experimented with flashlights to see the shadows of various objects around the classroom.

- The size of the shadows change depending on the distance of the object from the source of light

- Some students used the day light to see the shadows of real objects. They noticed a difference in shadows created by flashlight and daylight.

We learned how the light travels, what happens to the light when passing through objects.  We will continue exploring shadows and light building rich imagination and creating our self-portraits.  We are sending pictures from our class exploration on shadows.  

They worked together, observed, tried, made errors and tried again which is huge experience in character building.   

I can't wait to see what would their self-portraits look like.

Thank you!

Dance A-V

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. 

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Мы использовали фонарики, дневной свет, вспышку от фотоаппарата. К сожалению, солнца в тот день не было, поэтому не смогли поработать с солнечным светом. 

Вот что нового наши дети узнали:

- Тень появляется, когда есть источник света. Мы рассмотрели тени от разных предметов в нашей классной комнате.

- Размер тень зависит от расстояния между источником света и предметом.

- Мы поговорили о различии между тенью от естественного и искусственного источника света. 

Мы узнали, как свете перемещается сквозь предметы. Мы продолжаем изучать свет и тень, и создавать с их помощью свои автопортреты. Интересно, какие же они получатся!

Спасибо!