They loved the process of weaving. It was difficult and required a lot of concentration, which they loved to have. Once they understood the mechanics of the activity it was easy for them to repeat the pattern. Some of them struggled with the activity, but it was amazing to see how they asked for help and their friends helped them. Amazing teamwork!
6 years old
Light traveling with our artist friends in Korea
2023, 5 years old, 6 years old, 7 years old, KoreaComment나를 찾아. Finding me.
2023, KoreaCommentPiirtään ja väritään!
2018, 6 years old, Finland, Pre-SchoolComment
(English below)
Kaneleiden eskarit tekivät innolla ja keskittyneesti ensimmäistä tehtävää, jossa piti The Monkeysin lähettämät kuvat jäljentää ja värittää omaksi taideteokseksi. Jäljentämisen ja värittämisen apuna käytimme leivinpaperia, jonka laitoimme kuvan päälle. Kuvan ja leivinpaperin laitoimme ikkunaa vasten, jotta näki ääriviivat, joita piirtää ja värittää. Lisäksi meillä oli piirtämiseen lyijykynät ja värittämiseen puuvärit. Saimme yhden aamupäivän aikana tehtyä kaikki taideteokset. Tässä kuvia prosessista. Kaikki Kanelit lähettävät paljon terveisiä The Monkeys –ryhmän lapsille ja aikuisille. Jäämme mielenkiinnolla odottamaan seuraavia taideteoksia.
+++
The Cinnamon preschoolers excitedly and with great concentration made their first project from which The Monkeys sent their woks. From those artworks we traced and colored in the picture to make our own artworks. We used baking paper to trace by putting the baking paper on top of the picture. We put the picture and the baking paper against the window so that we could see the outlines we would draw and color. We used colored pencils and crayons. We did everything in one morning. Here are the pictures of the process. All the Cinnamons send many warm hellos to the Monkey kids and adults. We look forward to the next artworks.
The 6 year old artists at Päiväkoti Pihapirtti in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with the 6 year old artists from Your School in Espoo, Finland.
In winter 2018 Dear You project in Kontula is supported by the Museum of Impossible Forms.
Upeita taideteoksia Päiväkoti Pihapirttista!
2018, 6 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, FinlandComment
Paketti on saapunut! The package has arrived!
Hello! Beautiful thank you for your artworks, they were great! Here are our responses to your artworks :). Let's keep in touch! Kanelit/Eskarit/ Päiväkoti Pihapirtti.
Monkeys tekivät suoraan taidenäyttelyn ystävänsä taideteoksista!
The Monkeys immediately made an art exhibition of their friends' artworks!
The 6 year old artists at Päiväkoti Pihapirtti in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with the 6 year old artists from Your School in Espoo, Finland.
In winter 2018 Dear You project in Kontula is supported by the Museum of Impossible Forms.
The Monkeys translate their friend's artwork!
2018, 5 years old, 6 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, Finland, Pre-SchoolComment
Our new friends in Kontula have become even more alive as we all sat around to talk about the self-portraits. What do you think this picture means? What do you think our friend is trying to say with that gesture? Through the process of trying to understand what the picture is conveying, we started to connect with the picture and the person behind the camera. "I like horses too!" "I like to do gymnastics too!"
We had a good discussion about translation. Can we say something exactly in another language? We practiced saying hello and how are you in different languages. Even from that we sometimes got stuck because the direct translation wasn't always exactly the same.
We tried applying this concept of translation to picture form by tracing the self-portrait. Then when we added color, we could play around with how color enhances and changes the meaning of the picture. All the elements come together so choose carefully what you would like to communicate!
The Monkeys did an amazing job!
Sincerely,
Arlene, Sanna, Ben & The Monkeys
The 6 year old artists at Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with the 6 year old artists from Päiväkoti Pihapirtti in Helsinki, Finland.
Through photography, The Monkeys tell about themselves
2018, 6 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, FinlandComment
The Monkeys were very happy to hear that they have new friends in Kontula! They got even more excited when they found out that they will get to meet their new friends in May after making and sharing art with them for a few months.
Since this is the first artwork in the series, we thought long and hard about what we would like to share with our new friends. Everybody chose things they like to do, things they are interested in or shared traits about themselves:
Adripto: cabin crew (I like to help)
Neha: dancing and drawing
D: drawing
Pauli: hockey
Pranav: skating and playing with friends
Aryan: I like flying on airplanes
Aleksi: hockey
Vika: drawing
Aliah: I would like to show them how I draw
Rafael: I like how to play Kimbu with my friends
Nithila: I like to draw and I want to show it to them
Miriam: I want to show how I make snowflakes
Kinshuk: I want to show them how I play with legos
Miska: I want to show how slow I am
Miro: Playing with my soft toys
Umer: I want to show how fast humans are
Mikael: I like building castles
Once we got into the project we wanted to share even more things with you! Umer said, "We have some powers to teach you."
The Monkeys said that they liked taking the photo and also liked pretending for the photo. We hope you did too!
Sincerely,
Arlene, Sanna, Ben & The Monkeys
The 6 year old artists at Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with the 6 year old artists from Päiväkoti Pihapirtti in Helsinki, Finland.
The Monkeys and their epic stories
2017, 5 years old, 6 years old, Australia, Collective Art, Dear You Art Workshops, Dear You Workshop Leader, FinlandComment
The Monkeys did an amazing job working together to create their stories! They thought about the characters in the story, what the main idea of the story would be about, and then how the story would begin, progress, and then end.
Another great part of this Inspiring Stories project is that we first looked at the artworks from our friends in Australia to gain inspiration. So you could say, K/1HT had a helping hand and was an important part of this creative process! We inspire each other!
Thank you K/1HT for being such great friends to us! We love your artworks and hope you like ours as well! Wishing you a great 2018!!
With love,
Arlene & The Monkeys
The Monkeys from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with K/1HT class from Bulli Public School in Bulli, Australia. All artists are 5-6 years old.
These are pictures The Monkeys drew as they listened to the story, The War of the Animals.
Your art inspires stories!
2017, 5 years old, 6 years old, China, Collective Art, FinlandComment
Inspiration is everywhere! To see how our inspiration directly comes from our friends in Shenzhen, China we looked at the artworks they had sent us. This got our creativity buzzing!! It was also fun to review all the Dear You projects we have been making these past few months.
We then got into three small groups where a teacher helped the students to write down their thoughts on who the characters are in the story, what happens in the story, and how does the story end. Have a listen to the artists at work:
When the groups were ready with their story they had a quick think about how to TELL the story using their voice and intonation as an art form. As you can hear, they all did an amazing job!
Thank you for being friends with us! It has been great getting to know you through your artwork and videos!
With love,
Arlene & The Explorers
The Explorers, 5-6 year olds, from International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing with the artists aged 6 years old at Shenzhen Primary School in Shenzhen, China.
"Banana Sonic Jellyfish Turkey"
2017, 4 years old, 5 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, Finland, USAComment
Hey Tigers,
Please enjoy our covers. We greatly enjoyed weaving our old mural work into primary colored
foundations. We cut our first mural (the shadow one) into strips.
While we weaved we looked at woven baskets and pondered titles. In the end we all agreed to call the book, Banana Sonic Jellyfish Turkey.
Here is how we came to our title. Everyone who had a suggestion, suggested. Then we read off the suggested titles and collectively voted on our favorites. There was a three way tie for Banana, Sonic and Jellyfish. So we decided to have all three/ to make it fair, we rearranged these words in a variety of combinations.
Sonic Jellyfish Banana.
Jellyfish, Sonic, Banana.
Everyone, aside from three friends, thought Banana Sonic Jellyfish was the best title.
To accommodate, we asked our three friends what word they liked. One said, Turkey! (Because
we are celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow), everyone got excited, so it was added to the end.
Everyone loved it, it was unanimous.
Here were our other choices:
We are grateful to have this art pal friendship and the opportunity to share our work with you,
Johnny Buckley and the Full Moons
Moonstone Full Moons, 4-5 year olds from Moonstone Preschool in Philadelphia, PA, USA, are making and sharing art with the Tigers, 4-5 year olds from Your School in Espoo, Finland.
"Our Nice Monkeys"
2017, 5 years old, 6 years old, Australia, Dear You Art Workshops, Finland1 Comment
As usual, when I visit the Monkeys we start by reviewing what have made together so far to give context and understanding. This time, their memory continued to last year when we were making art with our friends in Mexico and United Arab Emirates! They recalled all the art projects we had made together. Amazed and heartfelt that they remembered all those details!
The November project, Weaving environments, is about putting the first two art projects received from our friends in Australia into a book. But what will the title of the book be? The first challenge of the day is to come up with a title together! So how will we do that? The Monkeys suggested we do rock paper scissors or listen to everybody. We did a combination and took a vote! They thought this could be a fair way to proceed.
SO many good ideas for the title to choose from! The possibilities were: 'Our Sweetheart', 'Our artwork', 'Our objects in the park', 'Our nice objects', 'Our nice Monkeys', 'Our nice friends in Australia', 'Our nice group', and 'Our nice toys'.
And the winner is...
Our nice Monkeys!!
Weaving was a new art technique for most of the Monkeys and they did a great job! They started to play with patterns and colors after they got the hang of the technique. Also, we talked about the symbolic aspect of weaving and the usage of recycled materials. I think our friends in Bulli can pick up a little on Finnish language from the papers we chose to weave.
Thank you and we hope you like our artwork!
My best,
Arlene and The Monkeys
The Monkeys from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with K1HT class from Bulli Public School in Bulli, Australia. All artists are 5-6 years old.
Happy to share with you!
China, FinlandComment
Sketching questions and putting these ideas out in the open for their friends in Finland!
The 6 year old artists at Shenzhen Primary School in Shenzhen, China are making and sharing with 6 year olds from International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland.
Are you silly? Great questions from the Monkeys!
2017, 5 years old, 6 years old, Australia, Dear You Art Workshops, Finland, Pre-School3 Comments
We had such a great time coming up with questions for our friends in Australia! Before we got started we first looked at the self-portraits we received. They are so beautiful! They also helped us guide what kind of questions to ask our new friends.
Making pictures to compliment words was a really good challenge for us. And each picture has it's own history as well! For example, Pranav drew a picture of his family to compliment his question, "What color hair do you have?" Everybody in his picture has black hair because that's what is like in his family! I am guessing the purple figure is the artist.
Let's turn this into a game! Below is what the artists drew. Can you think of what was their question? (some answers are below)
Adripto, "vegetables and fruits."
Pranav, "my family all have black hair."
Miro, "here is a boy who is taller than the house."
Aleksi, "cheese and carrots and watermelon."
Mikael, "there is a tree game."
Raphael, "this is a monster from Espoo."
Miska, "there are people running a race."
Vika, "this is a picture of me."
Pauli, "this is a picture of the game."
Umer, "there are 2 boys playing with space rocks."
We chose to use markers and colored pencils to make our artworks. The colors and medium make such a difference!
We hope you like our questions and we look forward to hearing your response!
My best,
Arlene & The Monkeys
The Monkeys from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with K1HT class from Bulli Public School in Bulli, Australia. All artists are 5-6 years old.
Which country are you from?
Are you silly?
How long is your arm?
How do you choose your clothes?
What food do you like?
Which city are you from?
What do you look like?
How fast can you run?
What color are your eyes?
Do you like to play clash clans?
Are you crazy?
How healthy are you?
Are you sleepy?
How long is your hair?
How tall are you?
ISH Explorers create self-portraits!
2017, 5 years old, 6 years old, China, Dear You Art Workshops, FinlandComment
It was so nice to see the two groups of Explorers have Morning Meeting in their own classrooms. Both Mrs. Nikurautio and Mr. Prebble have their own lovely way of being with their students. We then got all together to talk about the first Dear You project- Unique You! Everybody was so excited to hear that we have new friends in China who will be making and sharing art with us. We talked about when we first meet somebody new, what would we like to share with them? What would we like to know about our friends? This guided us in making our self-portrait.
We first used pencil to make the carbon transfer and then added charcoal. Once the mark making started to come through, their curiosity grew bigger and bigger. The artists could see how the charcoal was also adding elements of their fingerprints, which is a part of who they are!
Some reflections from the artists are:
Enzo said, "me playing with my dog. My dog is barking at his dog friend. I held my dog so he didn't run away."
Devansh said, "I'm in a boat going to India. There's a submarine and fish following us.
Deethya said, "She's at the hairdresser because she needs short hair. She's with her mum and there's a rainbow behind you since it's a beautiful day."
Aishiki said, "There are hearts in the sky. Because I like them. I feel like I am hearts in the sky."
One little artist said, "My picture makes me happy."
They all make me happy!!
Before closing the package we all sat down to write a letter for our friends. We have lots of questions!
Do you like frogs?
Do you like fish?
What do you do in China?
What are your names?
What language do you speak?
Where do you go in China?
We can't wait to see your artworks!
With love,
The Explorers, Arlene, Mrs. Nikurautio and Mr. Prebble
The Explorers, 5-6 year olds, from International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing with the artists aged 6 years old at Shenzhen Primary School in Shenzhen, China.
Monkeys make magic
2017, 5 years old, 6 years old, Australia, FinlandComment
The Monkeys are very excited to have new friends from Australia! We looked on the map to see where Australia is in relation to Finland. It's a looong ways away. They already had a sense of that because one of their teachers is from Australia. They are looking forward to making more friends from there!
We started off by talking about what it means to make a self-portrait. We looked at one other and tried to be eachother's mirrors. As we were investigating ourselves, we were thinking about what part of us would we like to share and tell our new friends.
This was the first time using carbon transfers and they all did a great job! As they were understanding how the technique works, they were coming up with their own ways of drawing. At that time, the Monkeys were learning about space so a lot of the artists incorporated the moon and stars into their self-portrait.
Everybody got a chance to talk about their self-portrait. Rafael said, "I have shabby hair and eyes." Miro said, "I am playing a game on my tablet." Adripto included a pictures of himself and his sister. Alia said, "It's me and my little brother. We are looking at the shooting stars and there is the flag of Somalia." Do these sound familiar to you?
We are very curious about you all and where you live! The Monkeys would like to know, what do you see in Australia?
Looking forward to hearing from you!
My best,
Arlene & The Monkeys
The Monkeys from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with K1HT class from Bulli Public School in Bulli, Australia. All artists are 5-6 years old.
From single to double self portraits
2017, 5 years old, 6 years old, Australia1 Comment
We had fun on our first Dear You !
The kids had done the priming activities before the day, discussing identity and DNA etc with Barbara Turner, the classroom teacher.
They had also spent some time preparing their "transfer paper" with 6B pencils so that when it came time to doing their self portraits, they were able to hit the ground running.
On the day we did two activities - the first was doing a self portrait with the eyes closed, and i did a demonstration of this on the whiteboard, which was a source of much hilarity - the resulting self portrait is pretty odd!
Self portrait with eyes closed using hand to feel the face. Demonstration on whiteboard for K1HT class, for the Dear You Art Project with a class in Finland.
Some of the kids were able to concentrate on this for a bit - many of them found it challenging to keep their eyes closed and focused, perhaps because of the proximity of all their friends - but at any rate it offered an alternative way of "seeing" the world through touch.
For the second activity, I had found some double mirrors from the university - our visual arts students use them for a self-portraiture activity in first year. They are on a hinge, I think these mirrors are designed for hairdressing apprentices originally.
So I asked them to do a 'double self portrait'. There were a few tricky things about this - the mirrors were standing up at 90 degrees on the desk, and so their reflective surface was a bit low for them to see their own faces. So Barbara got them to take away their chairs and kneel down on the floor so they could actually see their own faces.
The other tricky bit was just how to do a double self portrait. I didn't give them a demonstration - partly because I wanted to see what they would come up with - but in retrospect it might have been good to do so. There are some basic things about drawing your own face in a mirror which would have been worth pointing out - like observing specific things about the visual characteristics of one's own face, rather than just taking for granted that we all have two eyes, a nose and a mouth. You know, the usual "draw what you see, not what you think you see".
So I reckon if we were to do something like this again, I'd focus more on the actual mechanics/principles of observational drawing, so we would generate more specific, less generic, faces.
However, some of the kids did do some really interesting double self portraits, strange doublings, where two faces sit side by side, or one next to the other, or one slightly at different scale but otherwise almost identical.
We then got them to do their transfer print, using their double self portrait. This was a process involving a normal pencil - so that a harder tip could push the image through the 2 layers of paper onto the sheet that was receiving the image.
The transfer prints came through successfully, a bit faint perhaps, but it worked. They have a nice low-fi feel to them I think.
Barbara had photocopied lines onto the back of the paper, so the students then wrote a letter to the Monkeys in Finland - they enjoyed this process - for some reason a lot of them want to write "Kind Regards" at the end of their letters - very formal!
After the class, Barbara and I (together with a couple of young artists) experimented a bit with using crayon or pastel rather than 6B pencil as our transfer medium. This has advantages, as its much faster to cover the surface of the transfer paper with crayon, and the image transfers much more darkly to the final print. I reckon if we were to do this activity again, that's what we'd change.
I think Barbara was going to post them to you in the day or so after the activity - so with any luck the Monkeys will receive our parcel soon!
All the best,
Lucas
The K1HT class from Bulli Public School in Bulli, Australia are making and sharing art with the Monkeys from Your School in Espoo, Finland. Both groups are 5-6 year old artists.
Shadow portraits of our stuffed animals!
2017, 6 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, Finland, Pre-School, United Arab EmiratesComment
The Monkeys were so playful and adventurous when creating our shadow portraits. We first started the workshop by searching the space to find shadows and to see how we can make shadows using natural light and flashlights. Some questions that came up were, "Hey, where did my shadow go? Why is my shadow chasing me? What's the name of my shadow?"
Then we talked about how we were going to make our shadow portraits using black paper and graphite pencils. While we were drawing we were testing to see the different affects graphite and light have on each other. So lovely to see how a "normal" everyday medium can be looked at in new light.
After our works were made we gathered around to see the what came out of our shadows!
V: I made a dinosaur and butterfly. They are friends.
N: I drew a dog with a lot of teeth so that he can eat.
I: I drew a sun, hearts, a dog, and a banana.
C: I drew a dinosaur.
J: I drew a chair and its shadow.
P: I drew the sun, speeder and a rock.
E: I drew a smiling dog.
O: I drew a monkey and hearts because I like monkeys.
K & N: W drew a hand with a heart in it.
L: I drew a dog.
A: I drew my hand and a hare bunny.
Some of the Monkeys got out their stuffed animals or toys to make shadows and then use as a still life. Very clever artists these bunch of Monkeys are!
With love,
The Monkeys, Arlene, Ben, and Atefeh
The 6 year old Monkeys from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing with the 4-6 year olds in KG2D from Collegiate American School in Dubai, U.A.E.
Cy Twombly and shadow self portraits
2017, 4 years old, 5 years old, 6 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, United KingdomCommentHere 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.
Listening to who is there
2017, 3 years old, 4 years old, 5 years old, 6 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, Iceland, Pre-School, Singapore, South AfricaCommentWe introduced this theme in a very special way. The class sat in a big circle and closed their eyes. The played the Montessori “Silence Game” which is a calming, meditation like game which allows the child to use their senses like hearing. Once they closed their eyes, I asked them to tell me what they can hear.
- The trees in the wind
- The birds chirping
- The doorbell ringing
We got the children to paint, colour in and stick paper to make 3 sounds that they heard.
Enjoy our art project!
Love,
Oakdale Montessori 3-6 years class
The 3-6 year old artists at Oakdale Montessori School in Cape Town, South Africa are making and sharing art with the 3-4 year old artists from EtonHouse Bilingual Pre-school in Singapore and the 1st and 2nd graders from Grunnskóli Fjallabyggðar in Siglufjörður, Iceland.
Playing with light and shadow!
2017, 6 years old, Dear You Art Workshops, Pre-School, Mexico, United Arab EmiratesComment
Once again I find myself amazed by the kids response to this experience. Earlier this week we got mail from our friends in Dubai and you could love their faces looking at the houses of their friends abroad, the names of the kids in Dubai were a sensation because they are so different from their names.
Today we got to explore our shadows and we went outside, in pairs they helped each other trace their shadows and some of them even made silly poses. They had a blast! Then we came back to the classroom and they did the dame using our projector's light to trace the shadow of a part of their body. The cool thing was seeing them trying to come up with cool shapes for their friends!"
Saludos,
Mrs. Vicke Benavides
The 6 year olds in Prepri C from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico are making and sharing art with the 4-6 year olds in KG2C from Collegiate American School in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
