Dot Day!

Every year in September, Dot Day is celebrated by millions of people internationally.  In the book, The Dot, by Peter Reynolds, a little girl sits with an empty piece of paper at the end of art class.  Her teachers suggests she make a single mark on the page and then sign it.  She does, and when she returns to art class the following week, she sees her paper framed in swirly gold!  The girl then decides that if she can make one dot, then she will try to make even better dots.  All you have to do is try and see where it takes you!

We started our day with doing Dot inspired discovery centers.

      
First, we explored with dominoes...

Then, we drew fancy dots and used a paper punch to make lots of dots.

     
We rolled dice and counted out pom poms to fill an ice cube tray.

  
And then we created beautiful dots with loose parts. (Glass beads, buttons, pennies, etc)

To help us really remember the story, we watched an animated version on the smartboard.

Here are the three different ways that we made our mark! 

1.  Crayon Dots

                

    We soaked old crayons in water, so the paper would easily peal off.  

                               

We broke the crayons into little pieces, which help make our fine motor muscles stronger!

 The broken pieces were put into muffin tins and into the oven for 10 minutes at 275 'C.  

After cooling down and re-hardening in the freezer, we were happily surprised with lots of smooth, rainbow dots!  Now, we can continue making our mark all year long with our special dot crayons!

   

2.  Tree Puck Dots

                                 

We made our tree pucks into beautiful, shiny dots using special metallic paint.  

                             

This mark was inspired by Wassily Kandinsky

Color Study. Squares with Concentric Circles, 1913

3.  Collaborative Watercolour Mural

We used bingo dabbers and watercolour paints to make lots and lots of dots.

    

       

What a fabulous dot day!!

This week, we learned the poem called "Too Many Kinds in the Tub." We used our collaborative dot paintings to create a rainbow coloured bath tub to display our self portraits that we sketched and then painted.                                               We are becoming true little artists!!!

                         

Morning Kinders

 

Afternoon Kinders