Caroline
I love, Love, LOVE this book, The Dot by Peter Reynolds. A girl named Vashti is frustrated in Art Class and thinks she doesn’t know how to draw or be an artist. Her teacher teaches her a very important lesson when she says “Just make a mark and see where it takes you.” Vashti angrily makes a small dot on the paper and signs it. To her surprise, her teacher frames the picture and puts right above her desk. When Vashti sees it the next day, she is determined that she can make a better dot, and then an even better dot, etc. Soon she is displaying her artwork in the the school’s art show, which makes quite a splash with everyone. This book is sure to help your children understand that they really are artists.
To go along with this book we got out our watercolors just like Vashti did and started by painting dots. Any kind of dots we wanted, any color, any size….It was so much fun that we found ourselves painting several different pages of different dots.
After our dots were dry, we came back to them and used our creativity to turn them into a work of art. Using oil pastels, we made finishing details on our papers, and then signed our artwork. Here is what I came up with using the dots pictured above.
My son had fun making animals out of his dots…
And he says this is Saturn with the Sun and Stars in the background…
My son connected his dots together to make a Pyramid…
And a sky full of butterflies and balloons…
I had fun making a colorful tree…
And a pond full of fish…
Once their creativity started flowing, they had hundreds of different ideas of things they could create with dots. I thought I would put one of their pictures in a frame in their bedroom to act as a reminder to them that their minds are full of creativity and that they are indeed an Artist.
Happy Crafting!
