"Make Your Mark and See Where It Takes You"

Last week we were focusing on creativity and self esteem, the author Peter H Reynolds guided us through these learning experiences. The first book we read aloud was "The Dot" a story that fosters ones self confidence and encourages creative thinking through artistic representation.

 

Following the story each child had an opportunity to draw their own dot picture using pastels. Each picture was so unique and demonstrated the children's creative and meaningful connections to the story.

 

 

The next book read aloud was related to "The Dot" book but by another author called "Ten Black Dots." It makes several different pictures of daily objects out of dots. The book further encourages making connections and using ones imagination.

The children each designed a picture using various amounts of black dots. Together we made each page into our own "Ten Black Dots" book. It was inspiring to see all of the open ended things you can do with ten black dots. The children additional wrote a sentence to coincide with their picture.

 

 





As a class we read aloud the books we created together and each child was glowing with a sense of pride and accomplishment as their art pieces were shared.

To further stimulate the children's creativity we read "Ish" another story which encourages ones self esteem relating to their artistic ability. We introduced water colour paints for the children to explore visual arts. The paintings encouraged the children to communicate their ideas through an art form.

 

 

“Sky Color” was the final book we read this week to summarize the creative learning experience. The book encouraged the children to express themselves and their visual art representations by making connections to the text and their own experiences.

 

 

The children were able to display a deep awareness of themselves as artists through various engaging activities in visual arts.