Hello and welcome to the Magical Dot! We, Ms. Lang and Mrs. Kirk, are thrilled to welcome Lower Primary children to our beautiful, new school in Repulse Bay!
Our art rooms are becoming more colourful everyday with the creativity and energy of our Lower Primary artists. Now christened with paint and glitter, the art rooms have already helped host some Artsy Adventures in the month of August.
What have we been up to?
Like the famous painter, Wassily Kandinsky, said, 'Everything starts with a dot.' All grade levels began this year by making their every own dot. The 800 dots created will also help our school celebrate International Dot Day which on September 15th. From Kandinsky to the character, Vashti, in Peter Reynolds, 'The Dot', students have started the year by making their mark on the school! You can see some photo's of Dot day at the end of this post...
Reception 1 Artists have been exploring Colour with the help of a friend....
We are so excited to be teaching
R1’s for the first time this year! R1 budding artists have been learning about all the
important areas in the art room and classroom protocols. You can ask them if they
know what ‘Mona Lisa Quiet' means or ‘where you put your sausages’ when you stand
around the middle table. After reading Peter Reynolds book ‘The Dot', R1 children created dots that were inspired by music, like Kandinsky. Working in pairs, our artists listened to different types of music and used oil
pastels to create lines, patterns, and marks to respond to
the rhythm and beats of the music.
Our magical dot journey continued with our mischievous friend, White Rabbit who helped us discover some new colours. We had an exciting color mixing moment that showed the magic of primary colours changing to secondary colours using inks in glass bottles.
Watch the colours change...
Our Reception 2 artists practiced their fine motor skills to drop primary colors paper diffusers to explore color mixing.
...You can ask children what happened when White Rabbit jumped from the red paint pot to the yellow paint pot.
Reception 2 Artists have been mixing it up...
We began our colour exploration reading 'Mix It Up" by Henry Tuttle before mixing it up ourselves and exploring primary and secondary colors.
Artists then applied their skills to color mixing where they explored and mixed primary colors to create different greens, organise, and purples on their own white circle paper palette.
They even came up with new names for their colours... Golden Peach, Pixie Dust, Rainbow Yellow, Marshmallow green and rose petal purple were amongst a few...
Reception 2 students did a great job washing palettes and tables, cleaning brushes, and folding aprons after each lesson. You can ask your children how to make a color lighter or what happened with you mix yellow and red, or red and blue.
Grade 1 Artists have been wondering about the artist Kandinsky...
Grade 1 Artists have begun with a paper shape collage inspired by the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky. But first we began our year with a little paint joy.... painting patterned papers which were cut into shapes and used for the Kandinsky collage.
After preparing colourful backgrounds our Grade 1 artist's then explored the work of Russian Artist Wassily Kandinsky.
We noticed in his artwork that he like to create centre of interest - a focal point, we called it the the 'party point'.
Now it was our turn...we started with a big shape...
and created a 'busy spot', by overlapping shapes of different sizes and colors.
Our Artists also learned how to guide your eyes to the 'party point' by adding stepping stones, pathway lines and 'pointers' and how important it is to think about your space.
We finished our project with a special Kandinsky song created by the lyrical legend Ms Lang.
You can ask your children how they created a 'busy spot' or look at the artwork of Kandinsky and ask them why there are 'stepping stones' and 'pathways'.
Grade 2 artists have been growing their design brain with Mandalas....
Grade 2 design legends have been making mindful marks by growing magical mandalas in art class. Using a compass as their guide, they they have been creating designs inside an eight point circle by drawing shapes, creating patterns and adding detail to each mark they make.
Student painted the background of their circle with watercolour paints, drew designs in pencil and then traced over the marks with marker.
They added added 8 shapes that pointed to each of the compass points...ask your children why we use the compass? What does a compass do?
Then they decorated their shapes and added Mr Fill and Mr Jump...they added more decorations creating complex designs by layering simple patterns.
This was just a tryout....Now that they have mastered the magical mandala formula we will work towards making a mandala on canvas using acrylic paint and paint pens. You can ask students what the is Magical Number of the Mandala and where you would put a 'fill' shape.
DOT DAY...
We celebrated Dot Day on the 15th September...take a look at all the gorgeous dots your children created....
Happy Dot Day!!!!
Dotfully yours
Mrs Kirk and Ms. Lang
