Are you silly? Great questions from the Monkeys!

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?

Questions are colorful!

Hey Tigers,

Questions are colorful. Stories are colorful. Friendship is colorful. Enclosed you will find our questions on collaborative prints. We wrapped them in our new favorite punctuation... can you guess what it is? This project has turned us into inquisitive printers. Let’s print! Let’s assemble questions!

Did you know a printer has four little houses inside it? These houses are called toner cartridges and color lives in them. Each color lives beside another color. There is a red house, a blue house, a yellow house and even a house filled with black, like night. When we have an idea, say a dream, a question, or a story to share, these colors come out and mix together. They can be any color we want them to be depending on quantity. So we mix.

To recreate the inner working of a printer we turned ice cube tray wells into toner cartridges and dipped brushed into them to invite the colors onto our acrylic plexiglass screens (our landscape). There was a place space for, red, then yellow and then blue. We added black the next day when we attached our fonts. We created fonts by writing out our vowels, consonants and questions marks onto letter grids. We then cut them out into respective squares and shared them with one another. We also cut our A4 rectangle paper into squares by taking a way a few inches at the bottom. We reattached them at the end with tape as a way of including a space for thought and questions and also as a silly way mix up our questions and pictures.

We also made a large mural painting of question marks and color mixing exploration. Other friends in our school helped. We are the oldest kids in our school. We like to collaborate.

Questions are colorful and we think letters are the bones of words.

What is your favorite color? What is your favorite letter? Have you ever seen a cat? What is the weather like?

Cheers,
MoonTigers (a.k.a. Full Moons) & Johnny

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.

What? How? When? Why? Where? Let's make it!

We had a lot of fun with our latest project thinking up questions to ask our new friends from Finland. None of us has ever been to Finland - it seems a long way away right up there at the top of the world!

Before we started our project we talked a lot about the kinds of things we would like to know about boys and girls of our age from a different country. We looked at various examples of typography and graphic design. We also practiced writing our names on the computer in Word using different fonts, sizes, colours and features.

We tried to make the art works containing our questions look interesting by using different writing styles and trying our hand with special designs and graphics. We can’t wait to find out the answers to our questions. We’re also really excited  to read your questions for us!

Looking forward to our next big envelope!

All the best,
Everyone in K/1HT

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.

ISH Explorers create self-portraits!

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

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.

The Tigers are great storytellers!

The Tigers are super welcoming with their big smiles and good creative energy!  Today was extra special as I got to tell them that we have new friends from Moonstone Preschool in Philadelphia. Immediately the questions started buzzing and they tried to make connections.  They started sharing stories of who they know in the USA and if they have ever visited the country.

This was the first time the Tigers had ever made carbon transfers.  I am so proud that they all took their time to cover their paper with graphite.  The magic started when they began to draw.  That's when they got extra excited and thought it was magic at first!  Some got frustrated when the marks didn't go through, but they persevered and got it to work for them!

When we were finished we all sat down together to look at each other's artwork.  The pictures are so descriptive of who the artists of, where they live, and what they like.  Erik said, "I am on a bus. I am riding the bus to my home. This is big me and little me."  Mikelus said, "I am walking outside and stop in the forest for the postman."  Vanessa decided to make a family portrait.  Leevi said that this picture is of a happy person.  I love the positive image Leevi has about himself!  Reno said, "a tiny baby superman is playing basketball with me."  Who wouldn't want to play with you?!

Can you find the portrait of the carpetman?
Which pictures are of a happy person?
Which picture has somebody walking through an apple orchard?

We are so happy to make a collective book with our Moonstone friends!

With love,
Arlene & The Tigers

The Tigers from Your School Espoo, Finland are making and sharing with the Full Moons from Moonstone Preschool in Philadelphia, USA. Both groups are 4-5 years old.

From single to double self portraits

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.

Moonstone Full Moons + Your School Tigers = MoonTigers!

Dear Tigers,

We hope you will enjoy our collective contributions. Enclosed are our portraits along with our handmade transfer (carbon) paper. Feel free to separate them from our portraits and reuse them in your transfer explorations. It was fun (and messy) creating transfer paper.

While we worked on our portraits we thought about shadows and became shadow catchers, trying to capture illusive shadows casted by flashlight and lamp. Shadows have no eyes and they do not speak. Sometimes they grow, other times they bend under doorways and hide in dark corners. Our transfer paper making inspired us to take two large collaborative pieces of art and make a huge transfer portrait/piece, representing our unique and collective selves. Like unique individuals, groups are often unique assemblages. We are excited to art pal with you. We are calling our unique collective: MoonTigers.

Paint, pencil, charcoal, graphite and pastel are the featured materials in this piece along with our imagination (an essential). We applied our paint with squirt bottles and casted shadows with brayers, tiny little rollers. They really helped us spread the darkness. This large piece was then placed onto (above) for transferring. Here are our portrait samples (below).

We look forward to making art with you!

Cheers,
Moonstone Full Moons + Johnny Buckley

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.

Here are our shadows waving

The Universe and beyond!

Dear Art Friends,

We at Oakdale Montessori really enjoyed this project as it touched on a part of our curriculum. With our theme being the Universe. We’ve been learning about all the planets and we were able to zoom in to show the children that there is more than just one continent that they live on, on the planet earth.

We showed them that the earth is round with our Continent Globe and showed them how to read it as a map on a 2D surface.

With this we showed the children that the only way to get to our “Dear Art” friends is by an airplane or by ship and that is how we will be sending our art.

The children pointed out where we lived and then where their friends are.

Hope you enjoy our art as much as we enjoyed making it.

With love from
Oakdale Montessori

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.

The Tigers shadow play

How are shadows made?  What are they?  How can we play with them?

We first started this Dear You workshop by exploring different ways of creating shadows using natural light and flashlights. The light was shining so beautifully that day in Espoo that we didn't need to try so hard! 

After we got the hang of shadows we then used it to create artwork! Some of us took a more realistic approach and others took a more imaginative and symbolic approach. During the artistic process a few Tigers wanted to turn their creations into shadow puppets!  

At the end of the workshop, we all gathered around and shared thoughts about our own works and what we thought about our fellow artists' creations.

L: V's drawing made me real scared.

Ad: I saw that my shadow looked silvery.

Misk: The shadow of myself.

R: It's the shadow of my hand on the floor.

Ne: I draw what my body looks like with a heart. I like Miska's shadow.

P: My shadow portrait is a story of my family and the jungle. My daddy is 99 and my mommy is 36.

U: Neha's artwork is awesome. I drew the shadow of my hand. My hand controls everything.

V: How was it possible that the pencil shined when we used it on black cardboard? My shadow portrait is a long story about me and some animals.

So much amazing insight!

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

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. 

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.

Listening to who is there

We 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.

Opening packages from Iceland!

The artists in Cape Town, South Africa have received their first package from their new friends in Siglufjarðar, Iceland!

Exploring what a home means to us

We started by asking ourselves what home means to us. Then we went outside and in pairs, pretended we were visiting each other's homes. We described our homes, what they look like, what is outside in our gardens, playground, etc. then we came back in the classroom. We closed our eyes and imagined we were coming home from school. What does our front door look like? Do we live in a villa or apartment building? What is outside our home? We thought about these details and then began by making a drawing of our homes. Half way through class we came together and shared a few drawings. We made positive comments and then added one or two things that we thought could be added to the drawings shown, like the people who live in the home, the number of the house, etc. we also talked about what makes Dubai different from other places. What types of trees do we have (Palm and others), are the shapes of our roofs and villas unique? Then we went back to our seats and added more details. In the second class we reviewed our drawings and used them to help us create the pop up card in color.

Thank you,
Liz

Below are photos of KG2E art works.

KG2E class from Collegiate American School in Dubai, United Arab Emirates are making and sharing art with the Tigers from Your School in Espoo, Finland.

Below are selected artworks from KG2D.

KG2D are making and sharing art with the Monkeys. The young artists are 4-6 years old.

Our rooms in our house

The pop up house was interesting! We hadn't done anything like this before so we had practice at cutting scrap paper first.

The children were very excited to represent their lives through a room in their house and tried hard to find things from a catalogue that looked like their furniture. They like making their room come to life and it sparked a conversation about different kinds of beds!

The 5 and 6 year old artists in Class 1 at Sneinton C of E Primary School in Nottingham, England are making and sharing art with the 4 to 6 years olds in KG2B at Collegiate American School in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

We are larger than life!

Toti, Zeynab and the Tigers were getting ready to create pop ups! They could not wait to show me and their friends in Dubai the dinosaur helmets they made!

We started the workshop with taking a mental journey to our home. What do you we see in the living room? Which couch do we like to snuggle up on? How does that couch feel? After taking a tour we looked closely at different kinds of texture. We then practiced different drawing techniques on how to create texture.  Putting all of our knowledge together we created our pop-up homes that tried to capture what we like the most in the place we feel at peace.

Nit: A chair I use to relax. All my family can sit on it. It's gray, black and white and it's very smooth.

Neh: I have a sofa in my living room I use to relax and watch tv. It's made of hard cushions. I also have an eating chair.

Raf: I have a soft bed with pillows. My home is very colorful.

Vih: I have a gym room in my home where my mommy keeps my cloths. I have a toy dinosaur that is rough and I play with it.

Ume: My home has a seat in the living room. We eat there. Our seat is big. It's cold and icy, it's blue and yellow. We have pictures of stars, moons, and snowflakes.

Pau: This is my sofa. It's in my living room and it's white. It's a little bit hard and it's made of wood.

Adr: In my home there is a sofa in the middle and there are some decorations on the carpet. The sofa has white, red, green and brown decorations on it. The sofa is made of wood and has comfortable cushions.

Dha: This is my home when I was a baby. The sofa was brought by my mom and dad. And while my big sister was at school I always sat on the sofa with my mommy. The sofa is brown. It was soft and comfortable, but now it's a bit old.

Lil: This is my kitchen where I eat food. There are 2 chairs. One is my sister Elle's and the other one is mine. My chair is made out of wood and some soft material.

Ath: Here is my living room. There is a big tv and black curtains. We sit on the ground and chairs. The ground is soft and brown. I like to sit on the ground to watch tv.

Welcome, friends, to our home!

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

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. 

How many sounds are there?!?!

The children were surprised at how many different sounds there were! Some children said our world is very noisy and that wouldn't it be sad if we couldn't hear. We wondered if our friends in United Arab Emirates would hear the same sounds.

The 5 and 6 year old artists in Class 1 at Sneinton C of E Primary School in Nottingham, England are making and sharing art with the 4 to 6 years olds in KG2B at Collegiate American School in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Mapping the sounds from Germany to UAE

As part of the process, the class made a map of sounds!

This project was a bit difficult for me to conceptualize and present in an easy-to-understand manner. Because English is not the mother tongue of most of my kids, I thought they would have a hard time "picturing" what sound looks like. But I did my best and gave the children fingerpaint and let them go wild. 

To my surprise, many of them "got it" and what looked like colorful messes had a logic behind it. One boy in particular, who many describe as older than his 4 years, told me which colors corresponded to the quiet and nosy times of our day at the kindergarten. Pink is quiet, like our lunch time. But our morning circle is blue because it is loud. Green is quiet with some loud times. 

The surface that I gave the children to paint on was plain white paper with a pair of ears on the left and right side. They all recognized the ears and some painted the entire surface with wild abandon, while other concentrated on decorating the ears first and then coloring the empty space between them. 

When all the pieces were finished, I wanted something that would show the thought process of the children individually and the class as a whole. So I decided to create a map of the world and use the children's artwork to create a patchwork of the continents. Each patch was clearly marked with the child's name, so that they could find it on the map. The boy I spoke about earlier applied his color logic to the map and theorized that different areas of the world must be quiet or loud according to the color of the patches used. 

Sound art from Dubai for their friends in Espoo!

First, we watched a video about how our ears receive sound waves. The children had learned already about the 5 senses so we asked ourselves: which of these senses do artists use? Then the students closed their eyes and listened while I made sounds with different items. We tried to draw those sounds using different types of lines. Then we sat outside and listened to the sounds we heard:  birds, planes, cars and trucks, helicopters, children playing, footsteps.

In the second class we talked about the idea of things that happen “earlier” and “later” and spoke about activities we do in these periods. We tried to remember and predict “earlier” and “later” activities and to draw them.

Below are selected artworks from KG2E.

The kids found listening to the sounds outside really fun. Sometimes it was hard to remain quiet and just listen but then we enjoyed the process. What did your kids think about it? Was it challenging? Trying to draw the things that makes sounds from earlier and later periods was a bit tougher for us but we liked thinking about all the things we do outside of school. We drew things like brushing our teeth, playing, eating, and driving in our cars. In Dubai we have to do a lot of driving because the city is big and spread out. We also have big high ways.

What is it like in Helsinki? What animals live there? Do you walk, or take buses or trains to school? What is the weather like? We can sit outside now in shorts and t-shirts in Dubai but soon it will be too hot.

KG2E class from Collegiate American School in Dubai, United Arab Emirates are making and sharing art with the Tigers from Your School in Espoo, Finland. KG2D are making and sharing art with the Monkeys. The young artists are 4-6 years old.

Below are selected artworks from KG2D.

Monkeys in the moment

When I told them that our new friends live in Dubai everybody was so excited!! Some of them had been there and said it was so beautiful and hot! One of them said that their Mom wants to go back. It must be a great place!!

We got straight to making art for our new friends. We wanted to tell them about who we are through the sounds we hear in our daily life. We blindfolded our eyes so that we could focus on the moment and draw what we hear. The other two parts of the triptych depict what we hear at other times of the day.

Niila said, "I heard somebody on a bike."

 Luukas said, "I drew my house and my friends."

Erkka said, "I heard a ghost and my heart. Actually, it was the ghosts' heart.

Elle said, "I heard cats and dogs."

Iulia said, "I heard music and the clouds."

Alma said, "I heard an owl in the night. I also heard the wind."

Noel said, "I heard the wind and the other Monkeys."

Jonathan said, "I heard a tornado, fire, and 19 kids."

We all had a very different experience and that's what's so exciting about the artistic process.  Kasper said that he liked to draw with his eyes closed.  The Monkeys are brave for trying new things!

With love,
The Monkeys, Arlene, Ben, and Atafeh

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. 

Ashira heard her heart beating and her friends.