Mail Art + Pen Friends = Dear You Art Project
Printmaking and putting it to use is not only fun, but so rewarding for everybody. In this case, the Texans' friend in Iceland will enjoy their food even more when looking at such lovely designs!
Kathleen Finan and her group of 2nd graders at Amy Parks Heath Elementary School in Heath, Texas are making and sharing with the 1st and 2nd graders at Grunnskóli Fjallabyggðar in Siglufjörður, Iceland.
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.
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.
Last week we did the book workshop. The workshop was very intense.
I think it was a good experience for kids to think about the food. Children had drawn their favorite foods and then the ingredients separately. I asked children many questions how food is made and where the ingredients for the food come from. Children had many questions and it was interesting to see how they are figuring out the food chain.
Kristina Laine
Kristina Laine and her 4-5 year old artists at Kalinka Päiväkoti in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with Evelyn Müürsepp and her 5-7 year old artists in Mooste Preschool in Mooste, Estonia.
Здравствуйте! Посылаю фото масок и книг, думаю. Напишу, когда начнем делать след задание. Всего наилучшего!
Эльвира
"Hi! Here are photos of the books and the mask. I will message when we start making the next task. All the best!"
Elvira
The artists from Кепа школу (Kepa School) in Karelia, Russia are making and sharing art with the 1A artists at Viertolan Koulu in Vantaa, Finland.
We enjoyed creating our abstract painting, without using a brush, while listening to music. We were unable to walk around and find natural items to paint with so I put out drinking straws, Q-tips, and wooden popsicle sticks to paint with. We listened to the music then I demonstrated a few ways to use our new painting tools. The children had a fun time listening to the music and painting.
Kathleen Finan
The 2nd graders at Amy Parks Heath Elementary School in Heath, Texas are making and sharing with the 1st and 2nd graders at Grunnskóli Fjallabyggðar in Siglufjörður, Iceland.
Dear you!
I send you a few pictures from our march-project.
It is not as you told us to do, because we had such a rainy weather and we could not go out and pick up some things from nature.
So we talked about things we hear, when we are in different surroundings. In nature we hear birds, the rain, the trees and a lot of animals. In town we hear a lot of people going and talking, a lot of cars. When we are at home, in our bed, we hear the cars from the street, the family talking, the rain on the window.
So you will see, it isvery interesting to see the pictures and you can imagine by yourself the noises.
Hope you are fine and we wish you happy easter!
Best,
Simone
Simone Zobl and her second graders from Evangelischen Volksschule am Karlsplatz in Vienna, Austria are making and sharing art with Aili Vassil and her group of second graders from Mooste Põhikool in Mooste, Estonia.
The day after a big storm in Siglufjörður we went out to see what the wind had brought us. The ground had been all white the previous days because it had been snowing every day for many days. But that morning the snow was not white, it was covered with pine needles and branches from trees and all kind of stuff that the kids picked up. When they were painting they were thinking of the sound of the storm which brought us all this. We had all kinds of sounds, whispering, whistling, banging and heavy/vigorous sounds.
Below are pictures of the artist's work and also one picture taken before the storm, where the kids in 1-4th grade are outside by their snow-fort. As you can see spring has not come here yet, though we have had good weather the last days.
By, by Halla and Gyðný
The 1st and 2nd graders at Grunnskóli Fjallabyggðar in Siglufjörður, Iceland are making and sharing art with the 2nd graders at Amy Parks Heath Elementary School in Heath, Texas.
Lamees, the teacher in the classroom introduced the project during circle time while discussing the weather. We stopped and heard a bit of wind. I asked if they could hear it. We described it as the wind was crashing against the classroom. I told the children instead of using paint brushes, what else can they find in the garden and the first thing they went to was the trees. The colors of the week are green and yellow so we kept in with our theme.
The children were asked to go out into the school grounds and have a look to see what materials they could use / find which are different to what we would normally use in the classroom environment. The children looked around and
brought back pegs, sticks, leaves, twigs from around the school property and instead of using normal powder paint they decided to use food colouring.
The children loved the new and different way of painting and had a ball with the different leaves and colors.
My Toddler Class this morning decided that they also wanted to be included in the latest art project, so we let them experiment. The children in the Toddler class range in age from 19 months to 3 years of age.
Regards,
Tayla
The 3-6 year olds at Oakdale Montessori School in Cape Town, South Africa are making and sharing art with the Tigers, 4-5 year olds from Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.
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.
Hi,
Today we had a great pattern workshop. I had big magnifying glasses and apparently it was the most exiting thing. I instructed kids about the patterns, and they made things that they had seen through the magnifying glasses. For texture making we used simple color pencils so they are not that flashy. Kids were happy about the masks so I let them have it for a day.
Tomorrow I am going to collect them and send to Estonia.
Best,
Kristina
Kristina Laine and her 4-5 year old artists at Kalinka Päiväkoti in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with Evelyn Müürsepp and her 4-5 year old artists in Mooste Preschool in Mooste, Estonia.
It's a great idea and kids are natural pattern creators. One thing confused them though- namely magnifying classes, I should have left these out and just focused on patterns we can see with our eyes. Otherwise it is too much information packed in 1 project: patterns and magnification and ones skin and masks. Otherwise kids really loved their masks and did not want to send them away, but when i reminded them that they get masks in return from other kids in Finland they agreed.
So cant wait untilyour masks arrive.
Best greets,
Evelyn
Evelyn Müürsepp and her 5-7 year old artists in Mooste Preschool in Mooste, Estonia are making and sharing art with Kristina Laine and her 4-5 year old artists at Kalinka Päiväkoti in Helsinki, Finland.
We first started the workshop by playing a riddle game. This got our brains thinking about how can we tell things about an object without giving it away! From there we went into the world of senses and on this adventure- it was all about taste! We thought about what foods are local to Nordic countries and what foods are not. It seems that most of Your School's artists love picking berries from the beautiful forests of Finland! Can you guess what the Monkeys' and the Tigers' favorite foods are?
The Tigers are 4 year old artists at Your School in Espoo, Finland. They are making and exchanging art with the Puppies, 4 year old artists at Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.
The Monkeys at Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with the Full Moons from Moonstone Preschool in Philadelphia, PA.
Thank you Puppies! We OBVIOUSLY love our pattern masks you made us!
The Tigers are 4 year old artists at Your School in Espoo, Finland. They are making and exchanging art with the Puppies, 4 year old artists at Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Some students took it very literally, and just wrote clues without much art work to support what they were talking about... a lot of others provided a great amount of detail on each and every page.
Some almost made the books more puzzle-like - flip - to the back - flip back to the front, hide the answer, hide clues, etc. Again, the topic was pretty varied. Some chose a food, others favourite characters from books or movies, or an animal...
Most really enjoyed it, some opted out of some of the more "creative" component of the book.... :)
Here are a few short words on the class website.
Kaarina
Kaarina Losey is the 6th grade teacher at Pioneer Park P.S. in Ontario, Canada. Her group of artists are making and sharing art with the Päivi Huhtinen and her group of 5th graders from The English School in Helsinki, Finland.
Here are pictures of the work, tomorrow the books will be sent to Texas. The kids have had much fun doing the books. They introduced their book to the class, keeping it a secret which food they had chosen. The class was guessing and they were very excited, and in the end the secret came out.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to take part in this, and it is also great to see it on Facebook.
Love, Halla and Guðný
The 1st and 2nd graders at Grunnskóli Fjallabyggðar in Siglufjörður, Iceland are making and sharing art with the 2nd graders at Amy Parks Heath Elementary School in Heath, Texas.
What a fitting project for our little learners!
We are currently learning all about food in our classroom. The kids loved making these little books, we had more fun talking about our favourite foods!
It turns out, we are just like everybody else! Our favourite foods are pizza, cake, cookies, apples, oranges, bananas....
We haven't learned too much about tastes but we do know lots about colours and shapes!
Some of us say pasta is a circle, because of the plate, some see the long pieces of pasta! What colour is bread? what shape is a salad?? Different perspectives come from different minds.
We even turned it into a guessing game, guessing what something long and yellow is... or something red, yellow and a triangle shape....What fun!
We are also starting to write, we learned lots about writing shapes, colours and the names of our favourite foods.
We hope that our friends in Finland and South Africa enjoy our game and we look forward to learning what your favourite foods are!
Lots of love from Vietnam,
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 artworks from the Tigers Cubs.
Below are artworks from Puppies.
