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Fall 2012

How many ways can we create dots?The students in room 127 read the book “The Dot” by Peter H. Reynolds, to help prepare for International Dot Day. The excitement of this event inspired an entire “Dot” Project. We investigated how many ways we could create dots as artists.

After having read the book “The Dot,” the students were encouraged to participate in a wide variety of art experiences to build their

confidence as artists. We were certain that drawing and painting dots would inspire our students to draw other more complex shapes.

Here are some of the Curriculum Expectations that we covered throughout this project:

Big Idea: Young children have an innate openness to artistic activities.

Visual Arts: V2.2 explore different elements of design in visual arts

V1.1 demonstrate an awareness of personal interests and a sense of accomplishment in visual arts

Reading: 2.3 demonstrate an awareness of book conventions

2.4 respond to a variety of books read-aloud to them

Math: NS1.5 recognize some quantities without having to count, using a variety of tools (e.g., dominoes, dot plates, dice, etc.).

International Dot Day!The dots were everywhere! On students’ clothing, in their hair, scarves, hats, shoes, and jewelry. The colours, sizes, and fabrics were great conversation starters.

In addition to wearing dots, we also created dots with a variety of materials including bubble wrap and paint, toilet paper roll stamps, and buttons with glue.

The Dot Project

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Connecting the Dots...Creating dots became an entry into other areas of the curriculum. Here is how our project unfolded through visual arts, mathematics, dramatic arts, and reading.

Dot ArtDuring this project we learned about professional artists that painted with dots. The first artist was Georges Seurat who taught us about the technique known as “pointillism.” The easiest way for us to follow this technique was with paint and q-tips. Secondly, we began to layer dots in our paintings like Wassily Kandinsky. Lastly we were impressed by the modern use of dots in Louise Mead’s paintings. During our math lessons we often looked at Dot Art to extract math concepts such as patterns, colours for sorting, size, geometric shapes, and quantity.

It was wonderful to see how these artists influenced our students’ art!

Hands-on-Dots

Our dot explorations continued with many hands-on-experiences with dot manipulatives (buttons, bottle caps, colourful pom poms, marbles, round jewels, etc.) in the dramatic arts and math learning areas. At the dramatic arts learning area the students used the dots for make-believe play. This is known as the theory of loose parts. The loose dots were creatively transformed into soup, candy, treasures, and money.

At the math learning area dominoes, dice, and dot plates gave students opportunities to improve their ability to recognize number quantities.

Beautiful Stuff Dot Tree

Our Dot Project continued by reading more books about dots (e.g., Ten Black Dots, etc.). Then Ms. Babalis asked the students what they wanted to do with the remaining Beautiful Stuff, and one student suggested that they create a tree. After several conversations, the class came to a consensus that they wanted the tree to made out of plasticine with Kandinsky dots and Beautiful Stuff. When this all came together it helped celebrate and culminate two projects.

Thank you to the families who contributed dots to our tree.