Mail Art + Pen Friends = Dear You Art Project
I am happy to send you some pictures of our wonderful artworks. Our kids depicted our environments as they see it - full of autumn colors and favourite places. You can hang our environments both from day side and from night side, they are equally beautiful!
Best regards,
Lusine
Lusine Boyajyan and her group of 4 year olds artists from Kita Felix and Friends in Berlin, Germany are making and sharing art with Angy Castillo and her Kinder A group from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.
The happy Monkeys just got happier! They were very excited to receive the lovely letter and artworks from K2B class in Mexico. Every part of the process was exciting- from reading the names of our friends to talking about Elmer the Elephant! Thank you! Kiitos! Gracias!
We first started talking about what we see when we walk out of the school. What is the environment like outside of Your School's doorstep? Monkeys talked about pine trees, birds, bushes, and now we have snow. Now the grass is covered with white snow.
Then we continued with our characters and where their homes are. We imagined if we were at our friend's home and stepped outside, what would we find. How would it look in the daytime and what about at nighttime? The Monkeys first used wax crayons to accentuate and outline shapes. When they painted over with watercolor this art technique helped highlight what they were trying to show in their painting.
K2B, we have a couple of questions for you. Do you have snow in Mexico? What do you like to do for fun?
We hope you like our artworks and we look forward to hearing from you!
Our best,
Arlene & the Monkeys
The 5-6 year old Monkeys from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with the 5-6 year olds from Colegio Bosques de las Cumbres in Monterrey, Mexico.
The Tigers were so very happy to receive artworks from their friends from Mexico!! We read their letter and then proudly put their artworks on the classroom wall. Gracias amigos!
For the Look around project we started off by revisiting where our characters live. When we stepped out of our character's home, What did we see? What was there? What was the environment like? Everybody's imagination took them to a different place! We thought about what this environment looks like in the daytime and at nighttime. Using wax crayons and watercolors, we made our imagination come to life!
With love,
Arlene & the Tigers
The Tigers from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with Nursery A from Colegio San Patricio Cumbres in Monterrey, Mexico. Both groups of artists are 4 years old.
This project went really well and it was a perfect for our curriculum since we were learning about how to describe our own homes. So we took this opportunity to make a drawing and a little message describing their homes to our friends abroad.
They were really excited about letting everybody know how their houses looked. Also, when we covered the drawings with the black paint they got kind of nervous because they thought it was ruined. But then, when they draw the outside of their homes on top of the black paint their faces were priceless!! They were amazed to see that if they scratched the black paint, our friends in Nottingham could be able to see the inside of their homes!!
Saludos,
Mrs. Vicke Benavides
The 5 and 6 year olds in Prepri C from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico are making and sharing with the 5 and 6 year olds in Class 1 from Sneinton C of E Primary School in Nottingham, UK.
Greetings from Canada!
They really enjoyed the artwork as they got going with it. A few students used too much paint in an attempt to cover it completely and then had the paint flake off instead of allowing them to etch it off.
Some were very hesitant about painting over their artworks. :) Others enjoyed it so much they asked to do a second artwork jn the same manner!
Kaarina
The 6th graders at Ryerson P.S. in Cambridge, ON, Canada are making and sharing art with the 6th graders from The English School in Helsinki, Finland.
The children worked in pairs for this project. They really enjoyed the stickiness and the thought that the Mexican children would actually receive this art.
They love the SpongeBob films and noticed how he is a happy character and that yellow is a happy colour, like the sun. Doing him with tissue paper they thought was like his sponge body and using the transparent plastic was like under the water!!!
Best wishes,
Nina Evans
The 5 and 6 year olds in Class 1 from Sneinton C of E Primary School in Nottingham, UK are making and sharing art with the 5 and 6 year olds in Prepri C from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.
I asked the group to think about what makes them feel home. They wrote some thoughts on the back of the work. We used a ready made black & silver scrap-card board.
Last lesson we looked through the images made in Canada. They loved the works and had lots of comments.
We packed the Layers of Love scratch drawings, their comments, and the school posted it today.
Br,
Päivi
The 6th graders from The English School in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with the 6th graders at Ryerson P.S. in Cambridge, ON, Canada.
Our homes are on their way to Canada!
Young artists from 4A in Viertolan Koulu, Vantaa, Finland, are a real team of independent thinkers! Each artist created their own, unique home for their character. In some homes there were pets and flowers, a little bit like in the artists' own houses, while others were evidently created especially for Pockemons, horses and superheroes. Because of the small size of the paper, the secret houses look like postcards with a coded message.
Some of the young artists, encouraged by their wonderful class teacher Kirsti, had prepared personal letters addressed to their new friends. This is already the second letter they have written to the artists in Ryerson Public School in Cambridge, Canada. It is very inspiring to see different ways of communication that we can use to connect with each other.
Anastasia Artemeva
The 4th graders from Viertolan Koulu in Vantaa, Finland are making and sharing art with the 4th graders from Ryerson Public School in Cambridge, Canada.
The artists in K1 never seize to amaze me! Each of the artist's home, which they made using scratch art technique is unique just like their character. We started off the session by remembering who our characters are. We dove deeper into our stories and lives of our characters and talked about what their homes were like. What does the outside of their home look like? What about the inside? We used our own homes as reference.
K: The Ninjagos are playing outside in their yard on a sunny day.
DEV: Spiderman is dressing up in his house to get ready to fight the bad guys.
V: Elsa is coming inside her house to have snacks.
SH: Elsa is playing outside in the park, but all of a sudden it rains so she ran inside her house.
DEE: Elsa went outside and saw a swing and then she went on it. She saw a bean stalk and climbed up it and saw a castle and a giant.
G: Elsa is looking out the window and she saw somebody. She ran outside and played with them.
K: Elsa coming home from the market.
AI: Elsa lives in a home. She's looking at the Caste's garden.
SA: It's quiet inside the home.
MI: He lives in a den. He is hiding from the fire outside. He is safe inside.
EN: Living on the rocket, they are flying far away with the rocket. They are eating food inside.
SP: There is a tornado with spaghetti and meatballs in it.
SH: It is a car park with some tractors.
KA: Ninjago and doodle are making spaghetti.
AL: Piccachu is playing football outside the house.
SAT: The boy is playing with his toys inside the house.
As you can see everybody was open to exploring how we can use this technique to understand spaces and the revealing process of the different layers involved in life and in art practice.
We hope our friends in Mexico like it!
With love,
Arlene and the artists of K1
The 4-5 year olds in K1 at International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with the 4-5 year olds in K2B class from San Patricio Colegio in Monterrey, Mexico.
The Tigers really amaze me with how present and creative they are! As if we were in the homes of our characters we were drawing the interior and exterior of their houses. Brilliant! Each one is unique and takes you to a special place.
Everybody was eager to draw with oil pastels and paint. At first the scratching came as a bit of a surprise, but once they realized the affect it would give, they experimented away!
We hope our friends in Mexico enjoy our artwork and stories!
With love,
Arlene and the Tigers
The Tigers from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with Nursery A from Colegio San Patricio Cumbres in Monterrey, Mexico. Both groups of artists are 4 years old.
We started off the session by telling each other stories about our characters, which we had made from the previous Dear You art workshop in Lights, Camera, Action!. From then on, it was a smooth flow as to how to develop our ideas when creating our homes for the characters in Layers of Love. We took each other on an imaginary adventure to discover what's on the inside and on the outside of our home. As we scratching away the top layer the Monkeys realized that they could manipulate what they would like to reveal about the inside of the house.
Can you see which picture matches the artist's description?
K: I have an apple tree and pear tree and strawberries in my yard.
E: I have many strawberries in my backyard. There is a forest nearby.
VIO: My house is white. There is a forest and there are blueberries in the forest.
O: My house is brown and there are some trees around it.
VIG: It has many door and many flies.
N: My house is black. My room is so big.
L: It's white and super large.
J: It's long and it has a big room.
VE: It's white and big and beautiful!
A: It's white and almost big.
P: My house is big and the door is brown. The floor is brown because it's made of wood.
I: My house is a rainbow from the outside.
AA: I have a forest, terrace, trampoline, and black door in my house.
AL: I have a green house with a dark brown roof.
E: My house is red and black. There are trees around it.
Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you!
With love,
Arlene and the Monkeys
The 5-6 year old Monkeys from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with the 5-6 year olds from Colegio Bosques de las Cumbres in Monterrey, Mexico.
The artistic boys at Espoon kuvataidekoulu (Espoo's Visual Arts School) had fun creating the inside and outside of their character's home using scratch art technique.
When everybody came into the studio, on the tables were their characters they had sculpted out of clay and then painted. They were so happily surprised to see how their figures changed when fired in the oven! These were the characters they invented for the first project, Lights, Camera, Action! and have been continued into the following project, Layers of Love.
After some discussion about their characters we moved on to where they live. Everybody had a unique response. We first created what their home looks like on the inside. The colors they chose also help convey the feeling of the place. The artists were a bit wary of painting over the oil pastel drawings, but once they understood how scratch art technique worked, they got very involved with drawing the outside of their home.
Each one is unique and tells their own story! We hope our friends in Mexico like these artworks!
With love,
Arlene
The 6 year old artists from Espoon kuvataidekoulu in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with Prepri A, the group of 6 year old artists from San Patricio Colegio in Monterrey, Mexico.
From natural materials picking to using microscope convertor, our children became investigators zooming into this little gadget to look closer into the plants in our environment.
Following that, they did mark making on the clay using tools such as sticks and twigs to create lines similar to the ones on the leaves. This encouraged them to transfer their observation onto pre-cut paper before coloring using different mediums such as crayons and colour pencils.
Our final episode of this project was drawing a spiral and cutting along the line to create beautiful mobiles for our friends in Mexico!
Nurul'Ain, N2B teacher, and her 3 and 4 year old artists from EtonHouse Bilingual Pre-School in Singapore are making and sharing art with Marianna Diaz and her 4 year old artists in Nursery B at Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.
Making a connection at home and in school
Our children wanted to have a clearer view of their exterior home hence they drew simple pictures to represent different things such as potted plants, grass, building and windows. This guided them into thinking of the smaller details that exist in their home environment. In this experience, our children reinforced on their fine motor dexterity while learning to manipulate the writing tool while expressing their creativity through representational drawing.
Developing a sense of appreciation
Home-school partnership was present when our parents contributed into our inquiry learning by sending in pictures of their child’s favourite spot at home. Our children were actively participating in ‘Show and tell’ sharing about why they love that particular spot and how they would feel if it was taken away. This experience created a sense of appreciation of what they have and made comparison to children in other countries who may not have the same privilege.
Expressing creativity through drawing
While making doodles using the oil pastel, most of our friends observed the colour change when the colours overlapped while others were very focused on covering the white spots of the paper. There was an exchange of prior knowledge about how their individual homes look like from the outside view.
“My building is not tall. There’s only three floors.’’
“Mine is at level twenty-four but it’s not scary.’’
‘’There are lots of plants outside my home so I need to water them otherwise they will die.’’
Exploring technology
In creating a fond memory of our drawing, we included technology and learned the importance and efficiency of making copies using the photocopy machine. Here, our children identified the red and green buttons. Literacy was involved as they learned to spell the words ‘start’ and ‘stop’. In addition to that, they observed how the machine is operated and the process it takes to print a paper. Sounds of the machine captured our children’s attention as they listened attentively while the machine is making copies of their home exterior drawing.
Integrating inquiry with Math concept
After all the learning at the photocopy machine, our children sat down and began matching the original to the duplicated copy. When someone asked, ‘’How do we know whose are these?’’, another friend took initiative to bring in their name cards. It was a clearer view looking at everyone’s copies of work and this created a sense of achievement and teamwork for everyone in class.
Exploring different textures using different mediums
In order to identify the different view of our homes, we used different mediums to represent our home from exterior and interior view. At the initial stage, the exterior part of our house was the focus as they drew and coloured using oil pastel followed by covering with a layer of acrylic paint. Soon after, our children learned the ‘scratch’ art technique as they explored different tools and drew their favourite spot in the interior house while referring to their photo from home.
Sending a message through letter writing
As we learned that words contain messages, our children verbalized their messages to their friends in Mexico while the teachers wrote it on the paper for our children to trace over. While doing so, some of them identified sight words such as ‘you’ and ‘and’. Although it was tricky in ensuring the film stayed still while they were tracing, most of them were meticulous and patient in fulfilling this task.
Regards,
Nurul'Ain
Nurul'Ain, N2B teacher, and her 3 and 4 year old artists from EtonHouse Bilingual Pre-School in Singapore are making and sharing art with Marianna Diaz and her 4 year old artists in Nursery B at Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.
The Toddlers at Oakdale Montessori followed with the lights, camera, action theme. We asked the Toddlers to colour in 2 shapes ad Triangle and a Square with this project. As the theme was about inside of a house. We decided to make houses and decorate the outsides. The Toddlers coloured in with wax crayons and the painted the square for the house and the triangle for the roof. As the Toddlers are so small we did as staff help them with the windows and the smoke.
The Early Childhood class gathered together during Circle time and spoke to them about how we received Elma the Elephant and this time we will be sending back art in a shape. The children chose a square to work with. I think that fun was had by all watching the colours come up through the paint work.
Thanks so much!
Regards,
Rebecca
The Toddler and Pre-school groups from Oakdale Montessori Preschool in Cape Town, South Africa are making and sharing art with Nursery C and Kinder C classes from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.
Ms. Rachel, core teacher of N2A, presented Layers of Love project in a unique and meaningful way to her students.
Our homes represent more than our financial assets; they have a deep and unique emotional meaning. Our earliest memories of home are often connected to our childhood. Layers of love (our 2nd mailing project with Mexico) helped us to contemplate about our homes, inside and outside. It was not a mere art experience that just involved paper, oil pastels and paint to enhance creativity but a reflective process that helped children to share their perspectives through illustration of what home meant to each one.
I live in a tall building. I stay on the 7th storey. I have many books at home. I have toys in my home. The lift is on level 1. When you press the button, the lift will go up. I have a big table and a small table at home. I have big and small chairs too.
-Jiang Xi Wen
Nursery 2A and Nursery 2B, 3-4 year olds at 215 EtonHouse Bi-Lingual Preschool in Singapore are making and sharing art with the 4 year olds from Nursery B at Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.
I am happy to send you some pictures of our scratch project and the amazing stories of our creative artists. Our kids were delighted to see the new colorful images coming out as they scratched using very different tools: plastic forks and knives and other sharp objects. Some of them depicted inside of the place where the character lived, others displayed the outside.
Here are some of our stories:
Basti: This is a house with a chimney and smoke comes out of the chimney, down there is grass and the sun is up in the sky. Here I have a door and two windows. And here is my bed.
Raphael: This is a house. Out of the chimney comes a thick smoke. It has a door and windows. Near the house explodes an askumet. In the front of the house are large cobblestones.
Leyla: It's a man with a house, a letter box and a tent. The house is full of ghosts. The doors and windows are broken. In the left corner is a heart for the monster.
Maya: It's a scratch tree. It has leaves and they have different colors. It was a cat who scratched it all about!
Linus: It's inside the place but it's not my place because my place is very far away.
Aya: It's a house. A heart. It's my house. It's raining outside and snows sometimes.
Lyn: I was in my room and my sister was in her room. My father wanted to go to Aldi (supermarket) to shop and then there were two monsters next to the house. The monsters were nice and wanted to get married. The sun war shining and my sister looked out of the window and so did I . The girl monster had a necklace.
Tarja: This is inside the house. There is one circle inside it. There is an umbrella with a very long holder. Here is a 4, that's how old I am.
I am sending the parcel out today, hope it arrives soon and safe. And our friends in Mexico like our pictures and stories a lot.
Best wishes,
Lusine
Lusine Boyajyan and her group of 4 year olds artists from Kita Felix and Friends in Berlin, Germany are making and sharing art with Angy Castillo and her Kinder A group from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.
As the first art task of this school year, the group was asked to imagine what if an animation film was made based on their own life. They planned and drew sketches of the recent experiences they have had. This task just happened to be very similar to Arlene´s first Dear You task. Many combined these two tasks together.
Children seemed to be a bit shy when writing to their new Canadians friends. They had time to write only short notes. However it was nice to see how their motivation grew as they their work progressed.
As a medium they used waterproof markers, transparent copy sheets, class paints + some colourful plastic sheets. Most of the photos were taken against our classroom window.
Many of the pupils have been playing Pokemon Go and that shows! Many images are based on hobbies and other interests of life. Most images are very personal.
Päivi Huhtinen
The 6th graders from The English School in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with the 6th graders at Ryerson P.S. in Cambridge, ON, Canada.
We are ready to share our characters with our partners - Grade 4 friends from V.K. in Vantaa! Their package arrived today and we really enjoyed the art work! I posted their characters on the glass window in our room. I am sending a picture for you to see how beautiful they are.
The kids are excited to draw and write to kids who are far away from their country. There were so many questions about Finland and predictions on the climate. Some of the students really took time to share details from their lives.
I am sending pictures that show the working process and finished art work. It has been a great experience so far and we can't wait for the next art idea!
Together with art,
Dance A. Vasileska
Ryerson PS
Cambridge, Ontario
Canada
The 4th graders from Ryerson PS in Ontario, Canada are making and sharing art with the 4th graders from Viertolan Koulu in Vantaa, Finland.
Happy to send you some pictures from our project, Lights, Camera, Action!
Kids were excited to make their characters and to expand as they created more. I send you our small stories and some pictures.
Here are some stories from the group:
The rabbit goes for a walk. The rabbit melts because of the sun.
This is a monster. He likes stones and sweets. He doesn't like mashed potatoes.
This is a nice ghost. He eats meat, especially pork. He plays ball.
This is my mother. She goes for a walk and then to her work. She likes to eat rice and meat at home.
Lusine Boyajyan and her 4-5 year old artists from Kita Felix and Friends in Berlin, Germany are making and sharing art with the 4-5 year olds with Angy Castillo and her Kinder A class from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.
![Basti_3[1].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f34862e4b02a159fabe45b/1477291981173-1L2JWPROSUMSJYSZ2SOK/Basti_3%5B1%5D.jpg)
![Raphael_and_Basti[1].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f34862e4b02a159fabe45b/1477291956578-5RMH3SKSWOS6WXWITC4K/Raphael_and_Basti%5B1%5D.jpg)
![Basti_1[1].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53f34862e4b02a159fabe45b/1477291978053-D6YYWL9VKSJZZA3PQW6Z/Basti_1%5B1%5D.jpg)
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