The Music Moves the Tiger Cubs and the Puppies

WOW! What a great art project! The children absolutely loved this project and they produced some wonderful pieces that showed their thoughts and feelings from the music.

We started off this project by closing our eyes and listening to some music. I chose Simply Three's instrumental version of Avicii's Wake me up.

I chose this song because it has some clear layers of music that will attract different students. I also chose an instrumental song because English lyrics might be too difficult for us at this stage. 

After listening to the song once, i replayed it and we broke down all the different parts of the song. The beats, the high pitched violin and the deep base sounds and we started to draw on the whiteboard what we think those sounds looked like. 

A very popular response was spotting on the board to the beat, and doing swirls and waves to the melody.

What about the colour? What colour does it sound like? Blue? Green? Red??

Now it was our turn to paint! We had a range of medium to paint with. We had paintbrushes-thick and thin, chop sticks, cardboard toilet rolls, scrunched up paper and tissue.

Then the music started again and we were ready to go. The children were so eager, some starting with their spotty beats and others making rainbow waves. We had circles, we had lines, we had swirls and we even had some happy faces.

We played the music a number of times until all the children had finished their painting. Some even did 2 or 3 paintings, which are now proudly displayed in our classroom.

What a wonderful art project that the children really enjoyed.

Love as always to our friends in South Africa and Finland!
Teacher Steph, the Tiger Cubs and the Puppies.

The 4 year old Puppies from Just Kids in Hanoi, Vietnam are making and sharing art with the artist Tigers at Your School in Espoo, Finland.  The 4 year old Tigers at Just Kids are making and sharing art with the 3-6 year olds at Oakdale Montessori School in Cape Town, South Africa.

Below are photographs from the workshop with the Tiger Cubs.

Below are pictures from the workshop with the Puppies.

Magnifying our life!

Hi,

Today we had a great pattern workshop. I had big magnifying glasses and apparently it was the most exiting thing. I instructed kids about the patterns, and they made things that they had seen through the magnifying glasses. For texture making we used simple color pencils so they are not that flashy. Kids were happy about the masks so I let them have it for a day.

Tomorrow I am going to collect them and send to Estonia.

Best,
Kristina

Kristina Laine and her 4-5 year old artists at Kalinka Päiväkoti in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with Evelyn Müürsepp and her 4-5 year old artists in Mooste Preschool in Mooste, Estonia.

What am I? Oh what could I be?

We first started the workshop by playing a riddle game.  This got our brains thinking about how can we tell things about an object without giving it away!  From there we went into the world of senses and on this adventure- it was all about taste!  We thought about what foods are local to Nordic countries and what foods are not.  It seems that most of Your School's artists love picking berries from the beautiful forests of Finland!  Can you guess what the Monkeys' and the Tigers' favorite foods are?

The Tigers are 4 year old artists at Your School in Espoo, Finland.  They are making and exchanging art with the Puppies, 4 year old artists at Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.

The Monkeys at Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with the Full Moons from Moonstone Preschool in Philadelphia, PA.

The Tigers are pattern happy!

Thank you Puppies!  We OBVIOUSLY love our pattern masks you made us!

The Tigers are 4 year old artists at Your School in Espoo, Finland.  They are making and exchanging art with the Puppies, 4 year old artists at Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Masks from Moonstone show patterns from across the Atlantic!

The Monkeys in Finland were soooo happy to receive the masks from USA!  As you can see, they went straight to fun times with the artwork from their friends :).

The Full Moons from Moonstone Preschool in Philadelphia, PA are making and sharing art with the Monkeys at Your School in Espoo, Finland.

Guess what?! From Vietnam

What a fitting project for our little learners!

We are currently learning all about food in our classroom. The kids loved making these little books, we had more fun talking about our favourite foods!

It turns out, we are just like everybody else! Our favourite foods are pizza, cake, cookies, apples, oranges, bananas....

We haven't learned too much about tastes but we do know lots about colours and shapes! 
Some of us say pasta is a circle, because of the plate, some see the long pieces of pasta! What colour is bread? what shape is a salad?? Different perspectives come from different minds.

We even turned it into a guessing game, guessing what something long and yellow is... or something red, yellow and a triangle shape....What fun!
We are also starting to write, we learned lots about writing shapes, colours and the names of our favourite foods.

We hope that our friends in Finland and South Africa enjoy our game and we look forward to learning what your favourite foods are!

Lots of love from Vietnam,
Teacher Steph, the Tiger Cubs and the Puppies
 

The 4 year old Puppies from Just Kids in Hanoi, Vietnam are making and sharing art with the artist Tigers at Your School in Espoo, Finland.  The 4 year old Tigers at Just Kids are making and sharing art with the 3-6 year olds at Oakdale Montessori School in Cape Town, South Africa.

Below are artworks from the Tigers Cubs.

Below are artworks from Puppies.

Patterns to South Africa and Finland from Vietnam!

WOW! What an interesting project, we learned so much about ourselves and the world around us!

We started by looking around our classroom and noticing some repeated patterns around us. Particularly during the winter months, we can experiment with some interesting and wonderful patterns on our clothes.

Then we decided to go a little deeper, and we got some magnifying glasses and started looking at our skin. The wrinkles, the lines, the hairs. How interesting we are! What about our friends, what do their faces look like?? What happens when we pull funny faces?? when we raise our eyebrows??

Remembering what we saw, we got straight onto making our masks. we remembered the lines, the spots, the hairs and we made our masks with the patterns from our skin. But of course we had to add some colour! I hope our friends in Finland and our new friends in South Africa enjoy our masks!

Teacher Steph, the Tiger Cubs and the Puppies.

The 4 year old Puppies from Just Kids in Hanoi, Vietnam are making and sharing art with the artist Tigers at Your School in Espoo, Finland.  The 4 year old Tigers at Just Kids are making and sharing art with the 3-6 year olds at Oakdale Montessori School in Cape Town, South Africa.

Making shapes that move

After morning circle we looked at the works from our Helsinki friends, trying to understand what devices are depicted, how they move and what drives them. The kids got all excited to do their own vehicles. Everyone got a kit of 3 geometric shapes. We looked at them, named them and explored how can a rectangle be turned into a square, diamond into triangles and oval into half circles. The rule was that they can cut these shapes if they want (but only once and by halving them) and they can trade the shapes with their friends and add afterwards details with pens. Most of the kids started excitingly to work.

Markus: tank of Siim, it protects people from the baddies
Lauri: truck what carries miraculous sun sand
Ats: snowplough
Laas: one wheel train. for cat, ferret, mouse and birdies...
Matthias: horse pulls kings car
Mattias: tank what collects firewood for soldiers
Mona: crystal palace and princess bringing crystals
Eliise: estonian train, takes people from one place to another
Lotte-lisandra: flying car travelling to põlva (nearby town), my mummy waving to me because im going to buy her a bracelet
Henri: grandma and grandpa are taking post to avery usual castle
Ode: robot-butterfly is flying from blossom to blossom
Kar-kaarel: carbage truck what carries chocolate
Siim: cumputer tank what can be upgraded

best greetings,
evelyn

Evelyn Müürsepp and her 4-5 year old artists in Mooste Preschool in Mooste, Estonia are making and sharing art with Kristina Laine and her 4-5 year old artists at Kalinka Päiväkoti in Helsinki, Finland.

Patterns from South Africa!

All the children were introduced to the theme during circle time. My teachers explained to the children that our skin is made up of cells and that our finger prints are all different. The children were asked to describe what they can see on their skin and fingers. Some children mentioned that we have holes in our skin were the hair comes out, others mentioned that we have lines and creases on our hands and feet. We told the children that their hands and feet are unique and the children compared their hands with the person sitting next to them in the circle.

The teachers explained that we are going to decorate a mask using the patterns we see on our skin, hands and feet. The children decided to use ear buds, sponges and the back of paint brushes to try and make up the patterns. We used food colouring/dye for this exercise not paint.

On the back of each mask is the childrens name, date of birth and Pink for girls and Blue for boys.

Lots of fun was had by staff and the children – we cannot wait to start the next project. The parents have been informed about the initiative in our weekly newsletter and are very supportive of this fantastic idea.

Kind Regards,
Rebecca

The 3-6 year olds at Oakdale Montessori School in Cape Town, South Africa are making and sharing art with the Tigers, 4-5 year olds from Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Vroom vroom chugga chugga beep beep

It was fun!  The kids made wonderful vehicles.  I think they were very eager about it.  We used color paper, glue, scissors and pencils. 

Many kids adapted the task to their ideas about what kind of vehicles they would like to make.  There was even a human character- vehicle and a sweet princess carriage :).  Some kids followed the instructions, while others improvised.  I had a book about all kinds of transport and I showed it to everybody. 

Kristina Laine and her 4-5 year old artists at Kalinka Päiväkoti in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with Evelyn Müürsepp and her 4-5 year old artists in Mooste Preschool in Mooste, Estonia.

The Tigers take a closer look at their world

What?! How can that be? Where did that come from? 

Things started to look very different when put under the lens.  The Tigers were explorers and made art inspired from their explorations.  The world may look different after some close inspection : ). 

The Tigers are 4 year old artists at Your School in Espoo, Finland.  They are making and exchanging art with the Puppies, 4 year old artists at Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Tigers make it go!

See that flying car go!
See that monster truck go!
See that transformer go!
See that airplane go!
See that rocket go!
See that flying robot go!
See that walking bus go!

Where are they going to? To Vietnam!

The Tigers at Your School sure do know how to make these move.  We used geometric shapes to sketch out our ideas.  Next step is to make these drawings come to life!  I think the Tigers are a group full of inventors, engineers, mechanics, and definitely creative fun loving people.

With love,
Arlene and The Tigers

The Tigers are 4 year old artists at Your School in Espoo, Finland.  They are making and exchanging art with the 4 year old artists at Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Dynamic Dinosaurs at Açi Preschool in Turkey share their atmosphere

We are finishing our 1st semester here in Istanbul, Turkey. So we’ve been busy all these weeks but of course children were excited to hear about the new project of Dear You Art Project.

When the teachers informed them about the new project, the children got excited in learning about atmosphere.  Some of the children drew some zig-zag lines, some of them drew curly lines and some of them did their own design on it. They also told many creative stories related to their drawing which were written at the back of their drawing by the teachers. We sent our work to our friends in India and are waiting for their work too! 

We enjoyed making this project and we hope you’ll like it as much as we do!

Take care,
Dynamic Dinosaurs

The Dynamic Dinosaurs from Açi Preschool in Istanbul, Turkey are making and sharing art with the artists from Praxis School in Mysore, India.  Both groups of artists are aged 4-5 years old.

Environment Consciousness Week in our thoughts

As there was Environment Consciousness Week right before the Atmosphere project, children drew air and land, polluted air and clean air. After taping all works together kids did not feel like adding anything.

So long,  enjoy holidays and time!

Best,
Evelyn

Evelyn Müürsepp and her 4-5 year old artists in Mooste Preschool in Mooste, Estonia are making and sharing art with Kristina Laine and her 4-5 year old artists at Kalinka Päiväkoti in Helsinki, Finland.

Will they walk? or..drive?... or fly?!

The kids, as usual were very eager to start creating their next project. We remembered the amazing things we have made already. First we made a friend, then we had to make a house for that friend, then we needed a place for the house... now, how will our friend get around?

Will they walk? or..drive?... or fly?!
We had many ideas of transport that our imaginary friends could travel by. Cars, trains, buses, trucks, rockets....
I asked the children, so, what makes our things special? whats crazy or different about your train?

"my train is a High speed train!"
"my boat has candy inside!"
"my plane is also a bird!"
"my boat is going to my grandma and grandpa's house!"

So many imaginative ideas, we all had a great time playing with shapes and using our creativity.

Dear friends of Finland, we hope you enjoy our art!

Teacher Steph, the Tiger Cubs and the Puppies.

The 4 year old Puppies from Just Kids in Hanoi, Vietnam are making and sharing art with the artist Tigers at Your School in Espoo, Finland.  The 4 year old Tigers at Just Kids is starting a new friendship with the K1 artists at International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland. Exciting!! 

We did that?! Woo hoo!

We got a message from Stephanie Giltrap, the teacher of our Dear You friends in Vietnam, that they have made a display of our artworks at their school.  The kids all felt so proud of themselves that they saw their artworks on somebody else's wall.  Amazing!  Next Tuesday we will be Skyping with them and making another project to mail to them on Thursday.  This project titled ‘Let’s Go!’ is about coming up with our own inventions on how to travel to visit our friends in a far away place.  Everything is possible!

Love,
Arlene & K1

K1 is a group of 4 year old artists from International School of Helsinki in Finland.  They are making and exchanging art with the Tigers, a group of 4 year olds from Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Looking towards the horizon in Estonia

Töös osalesid lapsed vanuses 4-5 aastat: 6 poissi. Tööprotsess neile meeldis. Eriti see, et sai valida mitmesuguste pliiatsijoonte vahel, millega pind täita. Vaatasime rühmaaknast välja ja leidsime oma silmapiiri - taevas ja maa. Sellest tulenevalt ka värvid sinine ja roheline. Laste jaoks oli põnev koht, et piltidest kokku tekkis justkui pikk maastik orgude ja kõrgndikega - meie Lõuna-Eesti maastik.

Ja meile õpetajatele, mulle ja Lissile, meeldib lastega kunsti teha ja seda protsessi kõrvalt nautida.

Aitäh meie igapäevaelu rikastamise eest!

Inge

***

Most of kids from our pre-school have viruses, therefore only half of the group is together. 6 boys, aged 4-5 years participated at the project. They loved the process. Specially, that they could choose between different pencil lines with what to fill the surface. We looked out from window and found our horizon- sky and earth. From there the colours: blue and green. It was also interesting for kids that pictures together made long spanning landscape, with valleys and heights- our Southern Estonian landscape. 

And for teachers, to me and Lissi, we love making arts with children and enjoy the process. 

Thank you for enriching our everyday life!

Inge

Thanks to Evelyn Müürsepp for the English translation!

Kalinka artists share and care : )

In the last workshop the Siilit group from Kalinka Päiväkoti in Helsinki, Finland made a collective image about their environment. This time we used very simple materials: pencil, eraser and white sheets of paper.

I think they are always eager about the workshops. During the workshop, kids are usually divided into two groups because some speak only Russian and some only Finnish. I think it would be nice to have a Skype call, so that the kids could see who they are sending their works to. Of course, they realize this, but I think it would be nice to see each other too.

The children liked a lot the received mail from their Dear You friends in Mooste, Estonia. I showed them the works of Mooste Preschool's kids.

Kristina Laine

Kristina Laine and her 4-5 year old artists at Kalinka Päiväkoti in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with Evelyn Müürsepp and her 4-5 year old artists in Mooste Preschool in Mooste, Estonia.

The Tigers work together to create a beautiful atmosphere!

Together we connected the dots to draw lines that created a collective piece of art.  We first asked each other, "What can be found in the ocean?" "What can be found on land?" "What can be found in the air?".  From that we let our imaginations go and painted all the possibilities.

Afterwards when we put all of our individual paintings together to make one long Shared Atmosphere, we got out the Pop Up Homes and Puppets that the Puppies in Vietnam had made for us.  We were coming up with some great stories of why our friend lives in their home and how their environment can make them feel happy, sad, or silly!

Thank you, Puppies for making and sharing art with us.  We hope you like our artwork too!

With love,
Arlene and The Tigers

The Tigers from Your School in Espoo, Finland are 4 years old.  They are making and sharing art with the 4 year old Puppies who are artists going to Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Exploring Finland from Vietnam

The children are so excited to begin the next project! They ask me everyday when we will make something new for our friends in Finland. So bringing this project to them brought on a lot of excitement in the classroom.

I started by drawing a person, and a house and then we started talking about what else we can draw. I was met with suggestions of trees, and a sun and many other things from our environment. We then started a discussion about Finland and what the environment looks like there.

I then showed them 2 videos of Finland. We saw the beautiful long summer days and the long, cold winter nights. We were mesmerised by the beautiful northern lights. "I want to travel to Finland!", "I want to LIVE in Finland!".

So then we discussed what we did see in the videos of the Finnish environment. I showed them their next project and they were very eager to begin. Many stars and lots of snow, hot suns and water for boats. I was getting a lot of comments about the environment they were drawing, so, most of the pictures have small descriptions for our new friends to read. We also had the world map up on display for the children to be reminded of. The kids loved finding some of the new countries they are learning about!

We stuck them all together and followed our environment line from end to end. What a beautiful product! 

We hope you enjoy our artwork. It comes with a lot of love!
Teacher Steph, the Tiger Cubs and Puppies.

Below are pictures of the Puppies's Shared Atmosphere collective painting. The 4 year old Puppies from Just Kids in Hanoi, Vietnam are making and sharing art with the artist Tigers at Your School in Espoo, Finland.

Below are pictures of the Tiger Cub's Shared Atmosphere collective painting project. The 4 year old Tiger Cubs at Just Kids are friends with the K1 artists at International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland. Exciting!!