Our Shadow Selves from Canada

Unfortunately we had very poor weather with gray skies and rain for much of the time, so were unable to check out our shadows outside. As a result, we created our "shadow selves" by reflecting what we felt and liked on the inside, into a drawing for others to see. We gave our nod to the idea of shadows (e.g., being dark) by drawing with charcoal on the black background. The students really liked the opportunity to explore and draw the things that they liked and that represented them with charcoal. They were very eager and excited to explore both the medium and the topic!

To see the wonderful presentation Kaarina made of the artworks and creative process, please click here.

Kaarina Losey

Kaarina Losey is the 6th grade teacher at Ryerson P.S. in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada.  Her group of artists are making and sharing art with the Päivi Huhtinen and her group of 6th graders from The English School in Helsinki, Finland.

Cy Twombly and shadow self portraits

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Here are pics of a few of our shadow drawings. The children used different mark making techniques in white crayon around their shadows to had more complexity to their works.

We looked at Cy Twombly's paintings to think about mark making. Catching our shadows was actually a little challenging as we had some cloudy days here this winter! Plenty of sun now however! 

Thank you,
Liz

KG2B class from Collegiate American School in Dubai, United Arab Emirates are making and sharing art with Class 1 from Sneinton C of E Primary School in Nottingham, UK.

Experimenting with experience

We experimented with light and shadows of various objects. We used flashlights, daylight, doc. camera light...... Unfortunately, there was no sun today and we couldn't experiment with the sun light. This is what the kids discovered: 

- Shadows appear if there is a source of light. We experimented with flashlights to see the shadows of various objects around the classroom.

- The size of the shadows change depending on the distance of the object from the source of light

- Some students used the day light to see the shadows of real objects. They noticed a difference in shadows created by flashlight and daylight.

We learned how the light travels, what happens to the light when passing through objects.  We will continue exploring shadows and light building rich imagination and creating our self-portraits.  We are sending pictures from our class exploration on shadows.  

They worked together, observed, tried, made errors and tried again which is huge experience in character building.   

I can't wait to see what would their self-portraits look like.

Thank you!

Dance A-V

The 4th graders from Ryerson Public School in Cambridge, Canada are making and sharing art with the 10 years olds from Kepa School in Karelia, Russia. 

***

Мы использовали фонарики, дневной свет, вспышку от фотоаппарата. К сожалению, солнца в тот день не было, поэтому не смогли поработать с солнечным светом. 

Вот что нового наши дети узнали:

- Тень появляется, когда есть источник света. Мы рассмотрели тени от разных предметов в нашей классной комнате.

- Размер тень зависит от расстояния между источником света и предметом.

- Мы поговорили о различии между тенью от естественного и искусственного источника света. 

Мы узнали, как свете перемещается сквозь предметы. Мы продолжаем изучать свет и тень, и создавать с их помощью свои автопортреты. Интересно, какие же они получатся!

Спасибо!

VK 4A Lights, Camera, Action!

Characters and superheroes from young artists in 4A class in Viertolan Koulu in Vantaa, Finland are on their way to Ryerson Public School in Cambridge, Canada! 

We used oil pastels and overhead projector sheets to create the stain glass effect. At the end of the workshop the kids handed me a bunch of letters that they had written to their new friends personally. It was wonderful to see that Dear You project continues outside of our 90 minutes sessions. Together we wrote the names of the young artists and names of their characters next to each other, so it will easier to match artworks from this and following projects as the Autumn session continues.

The pace and the structure of our meetings are always important to me. As we use English as the main language of communication, with the help of the class teacher translating to Finnish and other languages, the initial discussion and the explanation of the project at the beginning always takes some time. This is enjoyable time for everyone, to think and imagine together. 

Then I make sure everyone has their materials ready, and for the second half of the session, the young artists just work independently, at their own pace, asking question if needed. My favourite part is when we have 5 minutes left, and everyone brings their works to the table at the front of the class, to admire each others' creations before placing them in one big envelope. 

Looking forward to our next meeting!

Anastasia Artemeva

The 4th graders from Viertolan Koulu in Vantaa, Finland are making and sharing art with the 4th graders from Ryerson Public School in Cambridge, Canada.

The Tigers tell it all!

The Tigers from Your School in Espoo, Finland are bubbling in their seats about their new friends in Nursery A from Colegio San Patricio Cumbres in Monterrey, Mexico.  Both groups of artists are 4 years old.

In the first project, Lights, Camera, Action!, we made artworks of a character from our favorite story. This is our introductory piece of art to getting to know each other.  The sun was also a tool to create our art with.  Good thing the sun was shining bright in Finland!

The stories liked were Goldilocks, Batman, Tree Monster, My Little Pony, Spiderman, Batman, Shark Story, Magical Fairy, Superman, Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bed, and Ninja.  Do you like these stories too?  Which characters do you like from the story?

We can't wait to meet you!

With love,
Arlene, Toti, Zeynab and The Tigers

Sun catch the rays in Berlin!

Here are some pictures of the sun catchers the artists in Berlin made.

Lusine Boyajyan, the teacher of the 5 year old artists at Kita Felix and Friends said, "We had a great sunny day and the kids were happy to explore the light and drawn pictures, the shadow of fingers behind the transparent paper...was a lot of fun :-)"

These artworks will brighten up Ahja's artists' day!

Fishes in the light

Simone and her 8 year old artists living in Vienna, Austria are exchanging art with the 7 year old artists from Vantaa, Finland. Simone, the Viennese group's teacher had such lovely comments about the April project!

Once again they had a lot of fun and were astonished what light can do. The colours of the fishes are so much prettier with sunlight!!

In Vienna the sun is shining and it's warm outside. We all love it!

Best wishes,
Simone

The Lumileopards make "Light Colour Houses"

Hello,

We are ready with our Sun Catchers!

Thanks for that idea again. You can guess that the kids were so inspired by the new idea.

We were discussing where light comes from and how. We made experimental research with different coloured papers and other different materials to see how light can get through! Also, we associated that with windows and as a result they wanted to make their own or one big "Light Colour Houses".

The kids said this about their task:

Leevi: "It was fun! Lovely colours!"
Rasmus S: "So hard to do..."
Veera:" It was nice thing to do!"
Miina: " It was lovely. but silk papers stuck on my fingers!!"
Andreas: " For me it was fun and easy.."
Rasmus V: " Stupid... boring.."
Miko: "I like it and light was so beautiful!"
Karl:"All was so nice and beautiful colours."
Sanni:"It was so fun choose colours, so nice!"
Mea: "Working together were the best!"
Eelis: "It was very hard to me, but still i like it!"
Helmi: "All colours were so beautiful!"
Teppo: "Hard to choose colours, but it was fun!"
Rebekka: "Fun task, also easy..."

We wish all of you a shining springtime!

Anne-Marie & Lumileopardit

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And here we have the finished Light Colour Houses!  Our shared village for everybody to basque in the warm light!

The Tigers shed light with their artwork

These profile self-portraits are like a mirror image of the artist!  The Tigers did a wonderful job with their Light Works and had fun experimenting with this new technique.

Wow! Aleksi did a spot on job recreating his hair!  His self-portrait had equally spiky and spunky hair as in real life.  Nachu said she was trying to draw her skin color.  Jonatan had a wonderful revelation when he put the yellow gel over the blue picture.  He realized that blue + yellow = green.  I'm happy that everybody had fun :).

Now for our Mice, we wonder what time does the sun set in Vietnam?  Sending light to our friends in Hanoi!

The Monkeys are full of Light & Love

In Finland, the change in light is one of the biggest differences we feel when moving from winter to spring. The Monkeys used the beautiful sunshine to make their artworks since this is one of the best things Finland has to offer right now!  

We first talked about how to draw profiles and then experimented with different silk papers and paper cutting techniques.  Some of the Monkeys got very detailed when drawing their profiles while others liked to add more collage and layering techniques into their pieces.  Either way, the results are amazing and I hope our friends in India will like them too :).