The Monkeys have made great travel companions for their friends at Moonstone Preschool

Ask the Monkeys for some travel advice and they will offer every kind of possibility! From buses to trains to rockets. This all came about when we were figuring out how our Imagine Me puppets are going to reach our new friends at Moonstone Preschool in Philadelphia, USA. Finland is quite a ways from there, but we are up for an adventure!

As we were creating our puppets we thought about what makes a good friend and here are some things the Monkeys said about their imaginative artworks. Meet Seek. Seek is a good friend because "he helps me when I need help," says J. N's puppet's name is Elsa. "She's a good friend because she's nice to me." I's Stella is "fun and playing with everybody. Listening to the teacher and doing everything herself." E called her friend Rosey. "Rosey is nice. She helps me get the way out." A's puppet Super Savior "saves me when I'm in danger!" M's puppet is a boat named Oh No. When I asked M why Oh No is a good friend, she said, "She makes me laugh." I think that's one of the most important characteristics a friend should have too!

Thanks for the lovely afternoon, Monkeys!

With love,
Arlene

The Monkeys (6 years old) from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with the Full Moons (5 years old) from Moonstone Preschool in Philadelphia, USA. 

I want to be friends with the Puppies from Vietnam and their puppets!

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 creative buzz at Viertolan koulu

When the students from Maija's class at Viertolan koulu started to draw their ideas of"imaginary friends"  all of them were really quiet and concentrated! Ooh that silence meant creativity was busy! The students were thinking of their friends in Denmark and of how they will react when they get Finnish imaginary friends in the mail!

During the artistic process the students noticed that their idea was developing and changing while they were starting to build their puppets. "Game man" got hair to puppet and one of the puppets even turned out to be a mask and a puppet!

Eliisa

The 3rd Grade artists from Viertolan Koulu in, Vantaa, Finland are making and sharing art with the 3rd Grade artists from Korsholm Skole  in Hinnerup, Denmark.

Excitement is in the air!

I introduced the project to my students by showing them the Dear You website. My students were very excited and became even more excited when I told them exactly what their 1st project were.

One of my students said: "Wauw are we really going to mail it to another class, and will they mail to us as well?"

They were so motivated and couldn't wait to get started. I told them what kind of materials they could use and before I could look around my students were already creating their own little imaginary friend. Each and everyone with a unique expression. 

As a teacher it was so nice to watch my students "grow" during the process, and it was even more wonderful to watch them write what kind of superpowers their imaginary friends have.

Right now we are all waiting to receive mail from our new friends in Finland.

My Best,
Tatjana Knudsen

The 3rd Grade artists from Korsholm Skole in Hinnerup, Denmark are making and sharing art with the 3rd Grade artists from Viertolan Koulu in Vantaa, Finland.

Imagination gone wild and furry!

The 'Imagine Me' puppets that came from the 4th Grade students at Amy Parks Heath Elementary School were extraordinarily furry, friendly, and funny! Yes! Seeing them immediately put a smile on my face.

Kathleen Finan, the artists' art teacher, said, "I was given a box of faux fur and knew the kids would love it. We talked about having imaginary friend when we were young and the ways the helped us. Students chose materials from an assortment of goodies and started creating their imaginary friend. They named their  I-friend and wrote on the back how their I-friend helped them."

I am sure their friends in Viertolan Koulu in Vantaa, Finland will be amazed by their new friend's creativity! Oh the amazing things that come out of Texas :).

Imagine Me Puppets from Vantaa, Finland are on their way to Heath, Texas!

Today went really well!  We had so much fun and they all loved it!  We looked at the map to see where Texas is and had such a good time that we lost track of time.

The kids were making sketches in their notebooks and were so happy with their drawings, that we ended up photocopying them from the notebooks and then cutting them out from the photocopy, and then adding glitter and buttons.

The teacher, Riitta-Liisa at Viertolan Koulu is just amazing!

Anastasia Artemeva xx

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Anastasia Artemeva is the Dear You Workshop Leader for the 4th grade class at Viertolan Koulu in Vantaa, Finland.  This group of Finnish artists will be making and sharing art with Kathleen Finan's 4th graders at Heath Amy Parks Heath Elementary School in Heath, Texas.

and then the _____ came from around the corner!

In these wonderful comics by the 2nd graders at Arivu School I see a world of surprises, witty humor and friendship! The art of visual storytelling shows so much about the creative artists in Mysore, India. I am sure they loved reading the comics from their friends in Espoo, Finland and I KNOW that the Monkeys at Your School can't wait to receive these comics!

Thank you Samanvitha Rao for being such an inspiring and great Dear You Workshop Leader!

I know what I'll be doing this summer...

Reading the great comics the 6th and 7th graders at Arivu School in Mysore, Indian have made for their friends in Estonia! The comics are full of adventure, humor, and tell so much about the artists' life and personality. I'm loving them!  Thank you to Anand Sampan, Samanvitha Rao, Heidi Ruokoniemi, and Pramod Stephen for creating a safe place for children to creatively express themselves!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar comic strips

If you haven't read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, then I'm sure after you see these comics inspired by Eric Carle's book,  you will want to!  The artists from Moonstone Preschool in Philadelphia, USA did a wonderful job!  Their friends at The International School of Antwerp will have some summer fun reading to do :).

Monkey Mania Manga

The Monkeys have found their other calling as comic artists! 

From the looks of their character studies they have a great handle on how to convey emotions and feelings.  Lotta drew a story that will happen over the summertime.  Lotta's big sister will have a birthday party and she drew how the event will go.  Let's all go!  Olivia drew all the things she would like to do this summer such as swimming, going on an airplane (lentokone) and playing on the swings.  Lumina's character study turned into a perfect way to learn Finnish!

Our friends at Arivu School in India are on summer holiday now, but when they'll return to a package of comics from the Monkeys :).

Have a beautiful summer holiday, everybody!

Sun catch the rays in Berlin!

Here are some pictures of the sun catchers the artists in Berlin made.

Lusine Boyajyan, the teacher of the 5 year old artists at Kita Felix and Friends said, "We had a great sunny day and the kids were happy to explore the light and drawn pictures, the shadow of fingers behind the transparent paper...was a lot of fun :-)"

These artworks will brighten up Ahja's artists' day!

Comic Strips from the Tigers

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!

Comics from Mooste!

These comics will for sure cheer you up! I wonder if the comic artist's friends in India will understand, relate, and chuckle all the same even if they don't speak Estonian. Aili Vassil, the artists' teacher, showed the work of Herluf Bidstrup as inspiration.  Indeed, the Danish cartoonist, did just that!

Koomiks

Evelyn Müürsepp, artist and workshop leader, gives great tips on how to make a successful comic workshop.  It seems that her group of 5 year old in Estonia are natural comic artists.  I'm sure their friends in Berlin will enjoy reading their stories!

Evelyn said,

It was a really good experience and I loved seeing how intuitively kids grabbed the idea and started producing their own stories :-)

I did now know where to start- as I have always struggled myself with visual storytelling- somehow I end up complicating things to fast. This time I just prepared few things and then kids got it from the air.

Things like:
- got couple of 3-4 image comic strip examples from internet (with and without text)
Then asked kids to tell what do they see. Everyone told it their way and then i told the version what was written on "bubbles"- It gave them example that there are many ways to interpret visual story...

- got some comic books for viewing (Just when waiting for start and afterwards when some got their work done earlier they were looking these)

-  printed out some ready made comic "boxes"- just in case

- prepared some themes and draw them some examples, themes like: "my expressions", "things I like to do", "my favourite foods", "my dear ones..." Themes seemed to be good just to have (mostly for teachers who were helping to give instructions for youngest ones). 5 year olds started immediately making their own, pretty complicated 3-6 image stories. It was interesting to see how kids who do not read yet follow the story line. It is not from left to right, but seemed to be that starting image was in center and then story was kind of evolving around that image- it never followed the same path, but went one way in the beginning and for next round just image sequence switched and story could go on like that forever- ie story wasn't linear, it was spiraling :-)

I do not know about others, but for me it was great lesson and I really enjoyed it, so seemed the children and teachers (they were actually also surprised how well kids got the idea and how creatively they interpreted it)

Tracing our View

The artists at The English School in Helsinki did a wonderful interpretation of the viewfinder project!  I thought it was so clever how they traced directly onto the clear plastic paper!  It seems like the students were posing for each other too.  We are each other's muses :).  

I'm sure their friends in Prague will be ecstatic when they receive these artworks!

Fishes in the light

Simone and her 8 year old artists living in Vienna, Austria are exchanging art with the 7 year old artists from Vantaa, Finland. Simone, the Viennese group's teacher had such lovely comments about the April project!

Once again they had a lot of fun and were astonished what light can do. The colours of the fishes are so much prettier with sunlight!!

In Vienna the sun is shining and it's warm outside. We all love it!

Best wishes,
Simone

Sunshine here to stay!

Evelyn and her artists in Ahja, Estonia have been waiting for a sunny day to take these pictures. The sun finally came and look how beautiful these artworks are!  I am sure these will make their friend's day in Berlin a shiny one!  

The Lumileopards make "Light Colour Houses"

Hello,

We are ready with our Sun Catchers!

Thanks for that idea again. You can guess that the kids were so inspired by the new idea.

We were discussing where light comes from and how. We made experimental research with different coloured papers and other different materials to see how light can get through! Also, we associated that with windows and as a result they wanted to make their own or one big "Light Colour Houses".

The kids said this about their task:

Leevi: "It was fun! Lovely colours!"
Rasmus S: "So hard to do..."
Veera:" It was nice thing to do!"
Miina: " It was lovely. but silk papers stuck on my fingers!!"
Andreas: " For me it was fun and easy.."
Rasmus V: " Stupid... boring.."
Miko: "I like it and light was so beautiful!"
Karl:"All was so nice and beautiful colours."
Sanni:"It was so fun choose colours, so nice!"
Mea: "Working together were the best!"
Eelis: "It was very hard to me, but still i like it!"
Helmi: "All colours were so beautiful!"
Teppo: "Hard to choose colours, but it was fun!"
Rebekka: "Fun task, also easy..."

We wish all of you a shining springtime!

Anne-Marie & Lumileopardit

View fullsize

And here we have the finished Light Colour Houses!  Our shared village for everybody to basque in the warm light!

The Tigers shed light with their artwork

These profile self-portraits are like a mirror image of the artist!  The Tigers did a wonderful job with their Light Works and had fun experimenting with this new technique.

Wow! Aleksi did a spot on job recreating his hair!  His self-portrait had equally spiky and spunky hair as in real life.  Nachu said she was trying to draw her skin color.  Jonatan had a wonderful revelation when he put the yellow gel over the blue picture.  He realized that blue + yellow = green.  I'm happy that everybody had fun :).

Now for our Mice, we wonder what time does the sun set in Vietnam?  Sending light to our friends in Hanoi!

The Monkeys are full of Light & Love

In Finland, the change in light is one of the biggest differences we feel when moving from winter to spring. The Monkeys used the beautiful sunshine to make their artworks since this is one of the best things Finland has to offer right now!  

We first talked about how to draw profiles and then experimented with different silk papers and paper cutting techniques.  Some of the Monkeys got very detailed when drawing their profiles while others liked to add more collage and layering techniques into their pieces.  Either way, the results are amazing and I hope our friends in India will like them too :).