The Monkeys translate their friend's artwork!

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.

The Tigers get creative with their self-portraits!

The Tigers are so happy and excited to have new friends in Kontula!  A place fairly close to where the Tigers live in Espoo!  Since we haven't met our new friends yet, we thought about all the things we would like to share about ourselves with them.  We got into small groups and came up with a very long list of our favorite things!

Joann: bunnies, diamonds, butterfles
Vanessa: ice cream, butterflies, candy
Aapo: puu, sledding, sweets, skating, surfboard, wii, Mario
Erik: candy, ice hockey
Leevi: candy, presents
Achu: babies, scary stuff, ice cream, coffee
Oskari: jäähilejuoma, ice cream, candy, spiders
Cride: candy, ice cream, ice cream drink
Rishita: glasses, little sister, new year, earrings, lips
Arn: dinosaurs, ghost
Olivia: ice cream, candy, shakes (big ones), ice cream drink, penguins, storm
Renu: butterflies, good babies, spider, ice cream

Wow! Do you like these as well?

Then we thought about how to show our long list of favorites in a photograph. This will be our self-portrait. Some Tigers made props to wear or hold in the photograph, some Tigers wanted to act it out in the photograph, and some Tigers wanted to draw and picture and then take a photograph of that. In any case, everybody Tiger came up with their own way of portraying themselves to their new friends.

We hope you like our self-portraits!

Sincereley,
Arlene, Floriin, Anna-Maria & The Tigers

The 5 year old artists at Your School in Espoo, Finland are making and sharing art with the 5 year old artists from Päiväkoti Pihapirtti in Helsinki, Finland.

The Monkeys and their epic stories

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!

TheMonkeys #DearYou #InspiringStories #YourSchool #Espoo #Finland #Arlene

TheMonkeys #DearYou #Espoo #Finland #YourSchool #InspiringStories

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.

Listen to the Tigers tell 'Joulupukki goes to India' and 'The Ice Cream Story 1'!

Who wouldn't be in the creative mood with the smell and looks of these delicious handmade gingerbread cookies?!?! With these in the air of the Tiger's room, we got straight to making the art work for our Full Moon friends in Philadelphia!

We started by looking at all of the artworks they mailed us. This gave us inspiration for our stories. We got into two groups and worked together to come up with characters and an amazing story line. Have a listen!

Tigers #Espoo #Finland #InspiringStories #DearYou #YourSchool

These artists create and told the story of Joulupukki goes to India! ps. Joulupukki means Santa Claus in Finnish :). 

InspiringStories #Tigers #YourSchool #Espoo #Finland #DearYou

Jumping with joy, the artists of The Ice Cream Story 1 say woo hoo!!

The Tigers are so grateful and happy they had this time to make and share art with you all!  Thank you and we wish you a HAPPY HAPPY New Year!

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.

Your art inspires stories!

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:

DearYou #Helsinki #Finland #InternationalSchoolofHelsinki #ArleneTucker

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!

Uploaded by Arlene Tucker on 2017-12-11.

The Explorers

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.

K/1HT on art

Hi Arlene and the Monkeys!

We really enjoyed your little movie where you answered all our questions. We have watched it a few times! Thank you for taking the time to make it for us!

We have sent an audio recording with our thoughts about your art works. We have some funny bits in there as well from our teacher who kept forgetting not to interrupt!!!

Australia #Finland #DearYou

This will be our last project with you because we will finish our school year in 5 days and when we start our new school year at the end of January, we will be in different classes with different teachers. It's been great to have been able to share our art and our ideas. We will miss you all!

Keep up the great creative art works - we'll check out the website from time to time to see how you are all going.

All the best
From K/1HT xxx

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.

Searching and Finding with your new friends

The Monkeys and K/1HT have been getting to know each other since September. In the second project, The Art of Asking Questions, we made artworks that involved how word and text have a great affect on each other. 

The artwork from Australia was received and the Monkeys made an amazing video response!

Response to The Art of Asking Questions

K/1HT responded in written form!

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.

"My friends are trading together"

What a day it was with The Explorers! When I told them that the idea today was to come up with a unanimous title for our collective book and to weave using recycled materials, everybody was so open minded to try new art techniques and to work together!  As always, I am deeply impressed with these young artists with how respectful and imaginative they are!

So how are ALL of us going to come up with one title when we ALL have such amazing ideas?  The Explorers came up with excellent suggestions such as, 1. to mix the ideas together, 2. we can vote, 3. we can take turns.  Being the kind and diplomatic group, The Explorers combined these methods and off we went with spouting out title ideas!

The top three titles were:
- Together my friend trading
- My friends are trading together
- Friends trading places

And the winner is, "My friends are trading together"!  This title really encapsulates Dear You art project and the process of exchange. Amazing how these 5 year old artists understand so clearly the heart of friendship, sharing, and creativity!

This was the first time The Explorers tried weaving and they all did a fantastic job as they took their time, asked for help when needed, and persevered when faced with a challenge.  Everybody could choose what they would like their base or loom to be.  They then played with colors, patterns, and happy coincidences that arose when weaving images together.

We hope our friends in China like our artwork!

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"

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"

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.

"Ladybugs"

When I got to Your School I was so happy to hear that another magical package from Moonstone Preschool in USA had arrived!! We opened it and pondered over the amazing questions the Full Moon artists posed to us.  In short, YES! We like Halloween too!!

For this next project, Weaving Environments, we thought about how the art technique can support the idea symbolically, but also practically.  Since the aim of this month's project was to  make a book cover, we first talked about the title of our story.  How do we unanimously decide on something when there are so many of us?  For example, when our friend wants to play a different game from you, how do we come to a peaceful conclusion?  The Tigers had so many lovely ideas such as take turns.  Seeing that we are such a big group, we thought to take a vote, which is something the Tigers do in the classroom too.

Here are the many different ideas that the Tigers came up for the title of their story. 

Everybody could have one vote. And the winner is Ladybugs!!

This was the first time the Tigers had a go at weaving. They all did an amazing job taking their time and making sure that they are going under and over when needed.  They got very good at seeing where things need to be corrected, which is a big part when one is weaving.  The artists could choose if they wanted to write the title 'Ladybugs' or draw ladybugs on the book cover.

I am so proud of them and they are of themselves, which is the most important part!!

We hope the Full Moons like our patterns, weavings, and book covers!

With love,
Arlene, The Tigers, Iveta, and Atefeh

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.

“over” or “under”?!

Dear Monkeys and Arlene,

We really enjoyed doing this book cover activity but we did find it a little hard to remember whether to go “over” or “under”! It took some practice but we think we got there!

We did this project with a teacher intern who was with us for 3 weeks practising to be a teacher. She loves art and craft and is very artistic! Her name is Ms Harris.

She suggested that, in the little squares that were created between the woven strips, we should draw some little pictures about things that were important to us in our lives. 

We hope you like our book covers for you!

You'll be HEARING from us soon when we finish the next project!

Best wishes from us all in K/1HT. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

P.S. We’ll be answering all your wonderful questions soon! Keep an eye out for another letter from us!

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.

Questions lead to more questions

The Tigers really know how to create a welcoming and artistic environment! They had so many questions and things to share even before we got started with The art of asking questions project! This sort of excitement is the inspiration every artist looks for!

We started the session by first looking at the artworks we received from the Full Moons. WOW!! We talked about what their pictures were communicating and was wondering about all sorts of things about our new friends. The questions started pouring out so we made a long list and then founds ways to put image to the text.

Some wonderful questions and explanations of the Tigers' pictures:
Vanessa asked, "What countries have you been to?" She drew a picture of the world.
Olivia drew a house because she asked, "Where do you live?"
Rishitha asked, "When is your birthday?" In the picture, "there are fireworks and my birthday."
Mikelis asked, "Where do you live?" He said, "I drew the house. I drew a mother house with a wheel on the top of another house."
Nea asked, "What is your favorite food?" She drew a picture of pasta.
Cride asked, "Do you like to go swimming?" and drew a swimming pool.
Achu asked, "Who is your friend?" "I drew a friend who is having a birthday."
Oskari asked, "What is your favorite shirt?" "I drew my favorite shirt!"
Erik asked, "What do you like to play?" "My favorite toy is a castle. It's at home."
Aapo asked, "Do you like shark tornadoes?"
Arn asked, "What is your favorite shirt?"
Renu asked, "What does your room look like?" "It's a picture of my room."
Joann asked, "What is your favorite color?" "Rainbow!"
Anton asked, "What do you like to play?" "What do you do when you are outside?"

We also came up with MORE questions!

What do you watch? What house were you in when you were small? Do you have a tv?

We hope you like our artwork! We like yours a lot!!

Our best,
The Tigers, Arlene, Iveta, and Atefeh

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.

Is it cold in China? Probably not as cold as it is in Finland!

The thing about questions is that once you get started you can't stop! That's how it was with The Explorers when I was with them making The Art of Asking Questions project. When I arrived to ISH we had such a lovely time looking at the artworks received from the artists in China. That's actually when our inquisitive minds started going!  We made personal connections to the self-portraits and then wanted to naturally know more about WHO these amazing artists are!

As a class, we came up with a loooong list of questions.  We then thought about different ways of depicting these questions and got to the making art bit as soon as possible!

We had a great conversation about why we chose to draw that picture for our question:

What do you like? "It's Darth Vader and Lollipops. I liked making it."

What candy do you like? "This is me and my big brother. He eats candy, but I don't any more. It's not good for my teeth."

What story do you like? "It's the story of Finland. That's me :) The house is from ISH"

What movie do you like? "My favorite is the Lion King.

Is your school fun? "I have fun at ISH"

What do you celebrate? "I'm celebrating Happy Birthday for my baby brother.

We like your art!!

My best,
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.

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.