What a week it’s been! The Super Kids celebrated “International Dot Day” on Friday. Haven’t heard of it? 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. The Super Kids came to school dressed in their dots and ready to celebrate together!
Peter H. Reynolds also wrote the following books with the same theme.
We 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. We looked at the Queensland Art Gallery’s website and interacted with the Kusama activities on the whiteboard. Click on the link below to learn more about her and interact with the activities.
Throughout the day we read dot books that included “Press Here” and “Lots of Dots”.
The rest of the week was filled with learning new routines, meeting our learning buddies, practicing buddy reading and so much more. Below are a few pictures of our very first “buddy reading” time. We talked as a class about how there are many ways to read a book. You can read the words and you can read the pictures. Even if you don’t know the words a reader can look at the pictures and create their own story. The class was excited to dive into the books and look for word they knew. The grade 2 Super Kids were eager to share what they know with our grade 1 friends. As you can tell the Piggy and Elephant books by Mo Willems are a big hit!
We meet our 5/6 Learning Buddies this week and went on a scavenger hunt with them outside. Not only did they have to find things, but they had to climb and swing with their buddies!
At the beginning of the week, I was inspired by the class’ questions about the birds they were seeing outside. The class loved the fact that our main floor learning commons has round dots in the windows to protect birds from flying into them. When they came back from music class, the students were surprised that I had set up an art activity based on our conversation! I love those days when your plan changes and you just go with it! We broke out the watercolour paints and created our own James Rizzi inspired birds. James Rizzi was an American modern artists that is known for his bright use of colours and child like drawings.
Working on our journals, learning new math games, and practicing our graphing skills can tucker a class out. When we can feel our energy dropping down, it is time for a movement break. Below is a picture of the class getting our blood pumping with a “Just Dance” video. The second picture shows the class calming down for focussed work with a GoNoodle video called melting.
I hope my Super Kids and their families have a great weekend. Remember that there is no school on Monday. I’ll see you all on Tuesday. 🙂
