Unleashing Our Inner Artists: The Dot
You know I’m always in the market for fun new ideas about books, crafts, or projects Little Crafter and I can enjoy together!
Recently, I saw a great post over at I Heart Crafty Things about this book, The Dot by Peter Reynolds.
Here’s how Rachel summarized the book:
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.
It sounded perfect for LC! We put it on reserve at our local library, and we were thrilled when we went to pick it up and the children’s librarian showed us that it was available on DVD too! We read the book and watched the video version and thoroughly enjoyed both. Then, of course, it was time to attempt some dot painting of our own! We had some blank canvases, and I introduced LC to watercolors.
I drew a circle for him, then let him go to town mixing colors inside of it.
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I helped just a little by dabbing off some of the extra moisture he got on it and helping to blend the colors a bit. He was definitely in charge of what colors he was using, though! We had to expand the circle a few times when he went out of the lines, but he thought that was great because it meant his dot was even bigger!
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I had him sign the bottom just like Vashti did, and now he’s insitent that we find a prominent place to hang it…which, of course we will, but we’re quickly running out of wall space these days! The complications of living with a prolific artist…:)
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I couldn’t help but want to try my own dot…it just looked like so much fun! While blue is LC’s favorite color, I went for this combo of pinks, oranges, and a little purple.
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TOTALLY FUN!
We really enjoyed unleashing our inner artists…what about you? Why not go paint a dot?
Thanks to I Heart Crafty Things for the inspiration!
So cute! I love the different colors. 🙂
I love it! What a great, simple way to get started!
Amazing! I had no idea how awesome painting a DOT could be! Love this idea! Thanks for sharing!
Following you on linky….would you be willing to follow back! 🙂 Thanks for once again linking to Thrifty Thursday!
Too fun! I love that idea! I can’t wait until my little boy is old enough to paint! I’m sooo doing this with him.
I was so excited to hear about you doing this activity. I love that LC got excited about the dot getting bigger. He is quite the Artist! Aren’t watercolors so much fun?!!
This is exactly the type of exercise I need for myself, lol. I just picked up some watercolour paint so this might be my next little project. Thanks so much for sharing at our LInk It Up Thursday party.
Oooh, how fun!! We will have to check this one out as well. Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!! I hope you will share with us again this week!