Georges Seurat and His Magical Dots

Dinos, Art, Music, and MORE!!


We had a great day today.

Today was our first official art day.  Mondays will typically be art and art history days.  We drew pictures of the islands we had made on Friday but we had a twist.  I had the kids draw on highly textured wallpaper samples (sandpaper works great, too, but I have books of wallpaper samples. . . my husband works at Sherwin Williams) pushing down very hard with their crayons.  I encouraged them to look at their islands and use the colors that they see.  This was a big challenge for ALL of the kids.  Kids at this age want to grab one color and scribble it on.  It is hard to look at something and replicate the shape and color.  The kids kept saying "I'm done!" but I would say "I think I see something red on your island. . .I don't see red on your paper. . ."  trying to encourage them to figure out what to add.

Then, I reminded them of Vashti and her Dots.  We talked about how all pictures have to start with a dot.  I then told them that some artist make entire paintings out of only tiny little dots.  I told them about Georges Seurat and his tiny little dots.  We tried to guess how many dots would be in one picture and commented about how long that would take to make a painting that way.   Then, I took their picture (on wallpaper) and put a piece of white cardstock on top, topped that with a thick kitchen towel and ironed it.  The result is a pointilism effect ala Seurat!  Very cool.  It was like magic when we revealed the end result each time.  The kids took home their islands, pictures and 'dot' picture.

Today we also started our unit on Dinosaurs, read a book about dinosaurs invading each day of the week, learned the names of 6 dinosaurs, talked about herbivores and carnivores, learned that we don't want to be a Mine-o-saur, played 'dinosaur around the clock' and had a dino race on the alphabet cards.

Wednesday we get to be paleontologists!