"The Dot"

Here in Kitah Dalet, we started reading a book entitled "The Dot" by Peter H. Reynolds.

 

Tha main character of this book, a child named Vashti (different from Vashti of the Purim story), does not think she is able to draw.
Her art teacher, however, thinks otherwise.
"Just make a mark and see where it takes you." she says.
In the story, Vashti listens and picks up a marker, making a "good, strong jab".
The teacher saw the dot that Vashti made and asked her to sign the paper. The following week, Vashti walked into the art classroom and saw that her picture of the dot was hanging above her teacher's desk in a swirly gold picture frame.

This empowers the child to continue drawing more and more dots of all different shapes and sizes, using different mediums.

We learned from this story that anyone and everyone can make art. Even one dot can be art.

We loved this story so much that the class suggested we make our own dot art. Using recycled container covers and other circular plastic material that the class had collected throughout the school year, we made dots on a square white piece of paper.

Ezra stamping his paper with a round container top and yellow paint

Annika decided to use smaller apple sauce squeeze tops to stamp with

Levi is stamping his paper with a big round container top and blue paint

Each child took the plastic circle that they wanted, dipped it in paint, and each stamped it on their own personal white sheet of paper. Next, the child took that paper and signed his or her name on the side of it.

Natalie made one big pink circle and is signing her name 

Henia chose to make multiple orange circles and wrote her name right in the middle of them all

After making the dots and signing our names, one of the Kitah Dalet students suggested to create a frame just like the teacher did when she hung up Vashti's artwork.

"Lets make it out of flowers!" he proposed.

A couple of days later, after everyone had a chance to finish making their dot art, we started making frames for our pictures.
Thanks to our local Trader Joe's store, who donates their leftover flowers to schools, we had so many beautiful and colorful flowers to choose from.

Pearl is decorating her frame with different colored flowers

Yannai chose to make his dots using his fingers instead of the plastic circles.

Evan made many dots and added flowers

Pearl is hot gluing rose petals to her artwork

Levi is adding roses to his art

Pearl and Yannai are working on their dot art together

Each student had a bigger sized brown cardboard square that they could glue their dot art on top of. After they glued their art they got to pick the flowers or flower petals they liked and, using hot glue, they were able to glue the flowers onto the sides of their artwork, creating a flower picture frame.

And just like Vashti's art teacher, we hung our beautiful new picture frames on our own bulletin board together to admire.

Now we know that anything can be art. The important part is that it comes from yourself...and, of course, that you sign it!