The Tigers are Listening, Drawing, & Sharing

The Tigers are very excited to meet their new friends from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates! They first asked where it is located on the map!  Some of the Tigers have even been to Dubai, but don't remember because they were 3 years old at the time.  But they imagined that it was a great place : ).

After going over where our friends live we talked a bit about different ways to share our space with our new friends. Sharing with our friends what we find in our soundscape, we decided, would be fun to do! Toti and the Tigers were listening to different sounds and paying attention to local sounds earlier in the day as a way to warm up their ears.

We talked about what a triptych is and then made our own.  In the first section of the triptych we used a blindfold and drew to the sounds we heard in the present moment, in the other sections we drew what we heard in the morning and what we will hear in the evening.  This is what we heard and drew:

Misk- I hear the wind in my heart.

Mike said, "I heard life, the wind." When Vihan saw Mike's picture he said that it made him feel like he was in a tornado. How do you feel when you see this picture?

At night time, V hear's that his daddy is tired so he drew a picture of Daddy yawning.

Adn, "Rainbow, rain, trees, gold coins found in the morning.

Arya- It was easier to draw blindfolded. I heard the blood in my body.

Ath- I heard the monkeys.

Lil- I heard my heart beating. Daddy sleeping and snoring.

D- I heard the Monkeys laughing.

R- I heard the wind.

P- I heard birds.

Neha- I heard bells.

U- I was sleeping in my bed and heard raindrops. (I kept my eyes open. I didn't like to close them.)

The Tigers said, "Dear friends, we would like to invite you to Finland! Far and close from us.

With love,
The Tigers, Arlene, Toti, and Zeinab

The 4-5 year old Tigers from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing with the 4-6 year olds in KG2E from Collegiate American School in Dubai, U.A.E. 

N heard birds in the morning!

Finland is feeling the love!

Dear friends from Finland:

Happy New Year!!  We received your projects!!

We are so excited, we received your projects and we loved them!!  Thank you so much, we hope you enjoy our projects too. Did you receive Elmer?

The kids were so happy to see the packages, we opened them and we saw all the projects you made for them, they were talking about it, they loved Elsa, Pickachu, the robot, etc...

We have a special place for all your artworks.

We hope you like it! 

Love, 
K2B, Ms. Gaby and Ms. Kasandra

The 4-5 year olds in K1 from International School of Helsinki in Finland are making and sharing art with the 4-5 year olds from Colegio Bosques de las Cumbres in Monterrey, Mexico

The Tigers make their way to Mexico!

I was so very impressed with how imaginative the Tigers were!  Some even made a three-dimensional boat to travel to their friends in Mexico!  Before getting started on the artworks we first had a good conversation about what vehicles were and how different vehicles travel.  The Tigers then decided to try to make some that fly, float, and go underwater!

The Tigers collected ice cream wrappers and candy wrappers from a recent birthday party to use for the collage. Have you ever had Penguin ice cream?

Thank you!

With love,
Arlene & The Tigers

The Tigers from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with Nursery A from Colegio San Patricio Cumbres in Monterrey, Mexico.  Both groups of artists are 4 years old.

Our connected world!

K1 makes creative connections!

We have been getting to know ourselves and the world through making art.  Now let's put all the pieces together and make a collective piece of art which shows different ways to get to our friends in Mexico!

As we were using recycled materials, the artists realized that this was also a sensorial experience! They smelled the empty coffee bags and thought that this could help with the travels :).  Some K1ers said that Mommy likes to drink coffee.

Submarines, flying helicopters, jets, and more!

Thank you!

Our best,
K1 and Arlene Tucker

The 4-5 year olds in K1 at International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with the 4-5 year olds in K2B class from San Patricio Colegio in Monterrey, Mexico.

Here's a panoramic view of K1's world!

A school of fish create a sea of inspiration!

The artists in Finland were very excited to have received their artworks from Mexico!  When they saw the fish we thought it would be great to create a collective piece of art and make a giant ocean. You will see colorful fish, mermaids, ships, and sharks!

Thank you, Ms. Laura Garza and Prepri A, the group of 6 year old artists from San Patricio Colegio in Monterrey, Mexico.

With love,
Arlene Tucker

Creative inventors in Berlin find a way to reach their friends in Mexico!

I am happy to send you some pictures of our creative discoverers from Berlin. 

The kids did not stop surprising us introducing the most unbelievable ways of getting to their friends in Mexico: starting from making a bridge and walking all the way to Mexico till the most innovative technologies with flying cars and submarines....

Here are some of the the stories and pictures of our journey: 

Emil: under there is water and up there is air and we break the air to get to Mexico.  

Raphael: From Germany we take a submarine and it sinks totally under the water. The clouds make lots of fog and we cannot go further for a time.

Basti: We take the submarine and the sun is there, the full moon and the earth. 
In case someone attacks us (the sharks) we can take the other submarines.

Aya: We can fly with an airplane and drive with a car. There is enough splace for my mama and papa.

Tarja: These are my parents and me. We build a bridge to Mexico and walk there.

Samira: We are in Germany and we go always around and around and when we want to go to Mexico we have to go out of this circle and take this way. This boat has wheels and this is an airplane and a smaller airplane.

Sonia: This is a girl who swims to Mexico. She puts up wings so that she can fly over the water. The airplane broke and the submarine broke as well. The girl has left her mask in the broken airplane. The sun gives warmth to the girl. The girl takes the snail to Mexico because the snail lives there.

Leiff: The boat pulls the car all the way to Mexico. 

Mia:  It's a car with ten wheels. This car can go up because of the sticks and the airplane can fly the car behind it. We go to Mexico all together, my four brothers and sisters and my father and my mother. 

Leyla: There are two boats, a ship and a submarine, my family goes in a ship and I am in the submarine alone. The airplane is for the seagull that wants to go back to Germany.

Best regards and thank you very much for organizing this beautiful project.

Happy Holidays and all the best!
Lusine 

Lusine Boyajyan and her group of 4 year olds artists from Kita Felix and Friends in Berlin, Germany are making and sharing art with Angy Castillo and her  Kinder A group from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.

Making, sharing, and then talking on the phone with our friends about it!

Kids were really excited about this project, they kept thinking about places were their characters could live and almost everybody came up with more than one idea, and so, they asked for the opportunity to make 2 or even 3 projects. 

Andres said that his character lived in disney because it was the happiest place in the world. 

Renata said that her character could live in the beach because he loved to swim in the ocean. 

Anabella and Sofía Ayala came up with a make-believe land were their character could live, because after all, characters should be able to live anywhere we can imagine!

This was by far the most enjoyable project for my kids and I was delighted to see them so excited creating beautiful pieces for our friends in Nottingham!

Global Classroom:
The day finally came when we were going to meet our art pals! Kids came really early to school so we could make the time difference work for everybody. 

We had a computer ready to make the facetime call but for some reason the connection was not being successful. So, us teachers exchanged our phone numbers and used our mobile phones to make it happen. 

My students' faces were priceless when they saw their friends live! They sand and danced for them, and they watched their friends do the same for them! They exchanged questions and got to know some differences about our schools. I have to admit they were kind of jealous because in Nottingham they get 3 breaks and they only get 1! We got to sing happy birthday to a beautiful girl who happened to have a birthday that day!! 

They asked questions about what was the time, how was the weather, how they get to school, what do they eat for lunch, etc. 

For the rest of the day they kept talking about this amazing experience, and can't wait for us to have another global session! 

I can't thank you enough Arlene and Nina, for making this happen!!

Xoxo,
Vicke Benavides

The 5 and 6 year olds in Prepri C from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico are making and sharing with the 5 and 6 year olds in Class 1 from Sneinton C of E Primary School in Nottingham, UK.

Abstract styles from Nottingham!!

We looked at pics on the internet of under the sea. The children were keen on making a list of all the animals that live under the sea.

Here are some snippets of conversations....

I think it's nice and warm
It might be dark and a bit scary
I like it in the dark... you can see awesome things under the sea
I think it's beautiful under the sea
I would like to look at all the animals under the sea
I like colouring it's fun because when you have finished you can play with it.
Spider fish
Electric Eel
Starfish
Swordfish
Seahorse
Elephant fish
Octopus
Hammerhead Shark
Stingray
Flying fish
Clownfish
John Dory
Puffer fish
Dolphin
Whale
Killer whale
Great white shark

Nina Evans

The 5 and 6 year olds in Class 1 from Sneinton C of E Primary School in Nottingham, UK are making and sharing art with the 5 and 6 year olds in Prepri C from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.

K1 have open arms for their friends in Mexico!

Today was an extra special Dear You workshop with the lovely artists at International School of Helsinki!  They were so excited to see what was in the package!  We read the letter from Kinder 3B and talked about their artworks.  Who is this frog character?  By looking at the artworks, what kind of personality does this frog have?  One of the best parts of this first share was reading the names of the artists in Mexico.  Some of us have friends or brothers and sisters with the same names!

Before the students came in from the park, Mrs. Maaninka showed me what K1 has been up to in their Unit of Inquiry, as part of PYP.  She showed me the great dioramas of the different landscapes and habitats they have been exploring. This subject coincided very nicely with the current Dear You project, Look around, which is about creating our character's environment using watercolors and wax crayons.

In circle time, we started off the workshop with an active discussion on what elements are in our environment.  When we step out of our school, what do we see?  The children said rocks, birds, trees, snow.  Oh, good thing they brought up snow!  I asked them, when I was here in October for the Layers of Love project, did we have snow?  No!  So that means our environment and our habitat changes.  We talked about these changes in relation to day time and night time too.  

We then shifted to our characters and thought about if we were at our character's home and stepped out for a walk, what would we see?  As you will soon discover, every artist in K1 was using their own imagination and making it come to life!

VA: In the day time there are bears who likes to wake up and eat berries. There are trees and lots of snow.  In the night time the bear sleeps so much under the moon light in the cave.

AR: In the day time it is sunny with a rainbow in the sky. At night time it is bright.

KES: Outside of Elsa's house is the blue sky, a bench, and yellow snow. At night time there are stars, sun, and moon, in the sky.

KEI: There is snow and it is dark at night time.

DEE: There are trees and it is dark at nigh!

MIC: Doodle saw two boxes and two dog balls. At night time there are star, trees, moon and one star is starting to break.

DEV: There is a house, trees, and raining rocks in the sky. At night time birds sleep in the nest in the dark sky with the moon.

SAS: In the day time there is sunshine and trees.

ENZ: In the day time you can see Darth Vader and rocks.  At night time you can see Star Wars, a princess, and Darth Vader.

SHR: In the day time, you can see a snake and princess Rapunzel. She was happy to see the sun! At night time, she is sleeping and there was a mouse.

GAU: You can see a boat on the water and mountains in the day time. At night time we sleep and the mountain looks like a letter.

ALE: This is Chewbacca's home. I am outside. There is a window. It is in the night time. It is a special house because Chewbacca lives there.

AIS: I drew a dog and he is going to sleep. It is night time. He has a tree home. There is a bear looking at his tree. It is dark outside.

SAT: I painted all sand.  There are snowballs. It is outside a boy's home. It is during the day, I see the sun. In the night time it is dark.

SPE: This is the night. The people are sleeping and the bad guys are trying to steal the candy. We are outside the treat's home. In the day time, I see candy rocks in the water. There is grass outside. The sun is shining, but it almost dark.

We hope you enjoy our artworks and stories!

With love,
Arlene and the artists of K1

The 4-5 year olds in K1 at International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with the 4-5 year olds in K2B class from San Patricio Colegio in Monterrey, Mexico.

From summer time in South Africa to sunny Mexico!

Hello Mexico,

It is summer now here in South Africa, so the Toddler class really enjoyed this project. Our School is situated in a suburb called Oakdale and all around us are Oak leaves. So we decided to focus on Oak leaves and the summer flowers that are brightly coloured. Hope you enjoy our Art –

Love,
Oakdale Toddlers

The Toddler class, artists 18 months to 3 years old, from Oakdale Preschool in Cape Town, South Africa are making and sharing art with Nursery C from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.

For many reasons, we are happy Monkeys!

The happy Monkeys just got happier!  They were very excited to receive the lovely letter and artworks from K2B class in Mexico.  Every part of the process was exciting- from reading the names of our friends to talking about Elmer the Elephant!  Thank you! Kiitos! Gracias!

We first started talking about what we see when we walk out of the school.  What is the environment like outside of Your School's doorstep?  Monkeys talked about pine trees, birds, bushes, and now we have snow.  Now the grass is covered with white snow.

Then we continued with our characters and where their homes are.  We imagined if we were at our friend's home and stepped outside, what would we find.  How would it look in the daytime and what about at nighttime?  The Monkeys first used wax crayons to accentuate and outline shapes.  When they painted over with watercolor this art technique helped highlight what they were trying to show in their painting.

K2B, we have a couple of questions for you.  Do you have snow in Mexico?  What do you like to do for fun?

We hope you like our artworks and we look forward to hearing from you!

Our best,
Arlene & the Monkeys

The 5-6 year old Monkeys from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with the 5-6 year olds from Colegio Bosques de las Cumbres in Monterrey, Mexico.

Tigers are grateful for their gifts from Mexico. And then make more art!

The Tigers were so very happy to receive artworks from their friends from Mexico!!  We read their letter and then proudly put their artworks on the classroom wall.  Gracias amigos!

For the Look around project we started off by revisiting where our characters live.  When we stepped out of our character's home, What did we see? What was there? What was the environment like?  Everybody's imagination took them to a different place!  We thought about what this environment looks like in the daytime and at nighttime.  Using wax crayons and watercolors, we made our imagination come to life!  

With love,
Arlene & the Tigers

The Tigers from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with Nursery A from Colegio San Patricio Cumbres in Monterrey, Mexico.  Both groups of artists are 4 years old.

Home sweet home

This project went really well and it was a perfect for our curriculum since we were learning about how to describe our own homes. So we took this opportunity to make a drawing and a little message describing their homes to our friends abroad. 

They were really excited about letting everybody know how their houses looked. Also, when we covered the drawings with the black paint they got kind of nervous because they thought it was ruined. But then, when they draw the outside of their homes on top of the black paint their faces were priceless!! They were amazed to see that if they scratched the black paint, our friends in Nottingham could be able to see the inside of their homes!!

Saludos,
Mrs. Vicke Benavides

The 5 and 6 year olds in Prepri C from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico are making and sharing with the 5 and 6 year olds in Class 1 from Sneinton C of E Primary School in Nottingham, UK.

Viva México

Sneighnten CofE's Layers of Love!

These are the responses from the children - 

I liked all the different colours

I liked scraping all the black off...it was like magic!

It surprised me how good it came out

The colours look like he is under the sea, it looks amazing. just like he is under the sea!

I liked making the patterns

Wow...the is amazing, I am going to do this at home

The children love love loved this project!!

Nina Evans

The 5 and 6 year olds in Class 1 from Sneinton C of E Primary School in Nottingham, UK are making and sharing art with the 5 and 6 year olds in Prepri C from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.

SpongeBob is like the sun :)

The children worked in pairs for this project. They really enjoyed the stickiness and the thought that the Mexican children would actually receive this art.

They love the SpongeBob films and noticed how he is a happy character and that yellow is a happy colour, like the sun. Doing him with tissue paper they thought was like his sponge body and using the transparent plastic was like under the water!!!

Best wishes,
Nina Evans

The 5 and 6 year olds in Class 1 from Sneinton C of E Primary School in Nottingham, UK are making and sharing art with the 5 and 6 year olds in Prepri C from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.

ISH shares their Layers of Love!

The artists in K1 never seize to amaze me!  Each of the artist's home, which they made using scratch art technique is unique just like their character.  We started off the session by remembering who our characters are.  We dove deeper into our stories and lives of our characters and talked about what their homes were like.  What does the outside of their home look like?  What about the inside?  We used our own homes as reference.

K: The Ninjagos are playing outside in their yard on a sunny day.

DEV: Spiderman is dressing up in his house to get ready to fight the bad guys.

V: Elsa is coming inside her house to have snacks.

SH: Elsa is playing outside in the park, but all of a sudden it rains so she ran inside her house.

DEE: Elsa went outside and saw a swing and then she went on it. She saw a bean stalk and climbed up it and saw a castle and a giant.

G: Elsa is looking out the window and she saw somebody. She ran outside and played with them.

K: Elsa coming home from the market.

AI: Elsa lives in a home. She's looking at the Caste's garden.

SA: It's quiet inside the home.

MI: He lives in a den. He is hiding from the fire outside. He is safe inside.

EN: Living on the rocket, they are flying far away with the rocket. They are eating food inside.

SP: There is a tornado with spaghetti and meatballs in it.

SH: It is a car park with some tractors.

KA: Ninjago and doodle are making spaghetti.

AL: Piccachu is playing football outside the house.

SAT: The boy is playing with his toys inside the house.

As you can see everybody was open to exploring how we can use this technique to understand spaces and the revealing process of the different layers involved in life and in art practice.

We hope our friends in Mexico like it!

With love,
Arlene and the artists of K1

The 4-5 year olds in K1 at International School of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with the 4-5 year olds in K2B class from San Patricio Colegio in Monterrey, Mexico.

The Tigers know how to love!

The Tigers really amaze me with how present and creative they are! As if we were in the homes of our characters we were drawing the interior and exterior of their houses.  Brilliant!  Each one is unique and takes you to a special place.

Everybody was eager to draw with oil pastels and paint.  At first the scratching came as a bit of a surprise, but once they realized the affect it would give, they experimented away!

We hope our friends in Mexico enjoy our artwork and stories!

With love,
Arlene and the Tigers

The Tigers from Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with Nursery A from Colegio San Patricio Cumbres in Monterrey, Mexico.  Both groups of artists are 4 years old.

From Circle Time to Colour Time

The Toddlers at Oakdale Montessori followed with the lights, camera, action theme. We asked the Toddlers to colour in 2 shapes ad Triangle and a Square with this project. As the theme was about inside of a house. We decided to make houses and decorate the outsides. The Toddlers coloured in with wax crayons and the painted the square for the house and the triangle for the roof. As the Toddlers are so small we did as staff help them with the windows and the smoke.

The Early Childhood class gathered together during Circle time and spoke to them about how we received Elma the Elephant and this time we will be sending back art in a shape. The children chose a square to work with. I think that fun was had by all watching the colours come up through the paint work.

Thanks so much!

Regards,
Rebecca

The Toddler and Pre-school groups from Oakdale Montessori Preschool in Cape Town, South Africa are making and sharing art with Nursery C and Kinder C classes from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.

Small stories and big ideas from Berlin

Happy to send you some pictures from our project, Lights, Camera, Action!

Kids were excited to make their characters and to expand as they created more. I send you our small stories and some pictures.

Here are some stories from the group:

The rabbit goes for a walk. The rabbit melts because of the sun.

This is a monster. He likes stones and sweets. He doesn't like mashed potatoes.

This is a nice ghost. He eats meat, especially pork. He plays ball.

This is my mother. She goes for a walk and then to her work. She likes to eat rice and meat at home.

Lusine Boyajyan and her 4-5 year old artists from Kita Felix and Friends in Berlin, Germany are making and sharing art with the 4-5 year olds with Angy Castillo and her Kinder A class from Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico.

Furry and cuddly reflections from Munich

Prior to receiving the project description, I was nervous about the supplies the project would need and if it would be age/ language appropriate. While most of the children I work with have at least a basic understanding of English, there are several that have no common language with the class, meaning that they speak neither English nor German. Therefore, class projects must be visually based to maintain accessibility. And even though Munich is a major city, simple supplies, like contact paper, can be difficult to obtain.

The project, “Light, Camera, Action” exceeded my expectations. It was specific without being restrictive and easy to incorporate into the previously scheduled classroom activities.

The current topic for our class is animals. We recently concluded our discussion on animals of the sea and were moving into land animals when we received the topic. We directed the conversation specifically to pets and asked the children to name all the different types of pets people keep. Many of the children do not actually have pets, so we asked them which kind of pet they would like. We then discussed the personalities their animals would have.

The kindergarten has two rabbits that are “everyone’s pets” but the children decided that rabbits are outside animals and would not make good pets.

To incorporate the use of light into to project, I showed the children pictures of stained glass portraits some people make of their favorite animals. The result was our version of stained glass, depicting cats, dogs, birds, and fish. They helped pack their artwork in a large envelope and are excited for their new friends in Mexico to see them. And they can’t wait to see what the other children created. 

Hallie Barrows
Munich German

The 4-5 year old artists at Elly und Stoffl kindergarten in Munich, Germany are making and sharing art with the 4-5 year olds in Kinder D at Colegio San Patricio in Monterrey, Mexico. 

Artists at work

Artworks on display