This was our first full week of school. The Super Kids were busy learning new routines and getting to know their 3/4 buddies. This past Thursday was “International Dot Day”. Haven’t heard of it? Well, the children’s book author Peter H. Reynolds wrote a series of inspiring books for children about being artists, making your mark, and being proud of your accomplishments. As you can probably tell, I love these books! The first of the series is called “The Dot”. “International Dot Day” was created to celebrate this book and the way it encourages children to be creative.
Peter H. Reynolds also wrote the following books with the same theme.
After reading “The Dot” the kids were excited to create their own dot art. Thanks to the help of a parent volunteer, we painted our classroom window with many different sizes and colours of dots.
We also learned about two famous artists that used dots as the inspiration for their art work. First we learned about the famous Russian artist, Kandinsky. We looked at his artwork and talked about what shapes we saw. We found out that he was inspired by music and his paintings represent what he felt music looked like.
I read “The Noisy Paintbox” to the class to introduce Kandinsky and to help us understand his life. Many students noticed that the book had an award on the front. It has won the Caldecott Award, which is an award given out annually to books that are recognized for their illustrations.
We then created our own abstract dot art inspired by Kandinsky. We put on some classical music and got started. We used pastels and water colour paints to create our own masterpieces.
The second artist we talked about was Yayoi Kusama. She is a Japanese artist who creates modern art by using dots. She encourages children to make their own artist mark on the world and has created many interactive rooms, for kids to create dot art.
The class thought her art was fun and made them giggle. We used the following website to create our own Kusama inspired dot rooms. There are many art inspired kids games on this website. It is the Queensland Art Gallery website from Queensland Australia. Check it out. 🙂
www.qagoma.gld.gov.au/learn/kids/home
As you can tell it was a great day!
This week we also got started on math workshop. We began practicing math activities, how it rotates and getting used to the different stages of games so everyone is challenged in the classroom. Beginning next week, I will be pulling groups of kids over to work with me on the different math skills that they are working on during this time.
Our grade 3/4 buddies came to our room for our first buddy time. I’m not sure who was more excited, our class or our buddies! Many of the 3/4 students have been in my class before and were excited to be the older buddies this year. We got to know each other, read some books, played some cards, and we even taught them a new movement break.
Friday afternoon was HOT in our classroom. The air conditioning is broken in our school and the room was so humid. We decided to go outside for our centre time. Sometimes you just have to swing!
I hope everyone enjoys their weekend. Remember there is no school on Monday, so I’ll see all of my Super Kids on Tuesday.
Mrs. Didyk
