Remember Dot Day? And then our Dot Day Mystery Skype? Well, I know it’s been a month since that fabulous day, and so you probably weren’t expecting another Dot Day blog post, but SURPRISE–here’s another one!!
We’ve been looking for a place in our hallway to hang our amazing dot creations, and it seems that it took us a LONG TIME to make that happen. Yesterday we finally decided to put them in a doorway where they could hang indefinitely, with an invitation to the rest of Robinson to make their own mark on the world EVERY DAY. Here’s what we came up with:
See how it’s double-sided?? Originally our paintings were big and on whole pieces of paper, but we made them into dots to make them fit better in that space and to highlight the designs. The best part? Someone (our art teacher even!!) already noticed and pointed out how much she loves it! YAY!! Great work, first grade. 🙂
We had a SUPER Dot Day this year, and a lot like last year, there was too much fun for just one day! Oh, and I realized that I forgot to mention that in addition to The Dot, we shared many other Peter Reynolds titles, and sang another Emily Arrow song, too!
OK, moving on…If you read the post from Dot Day 2016, you’ll notice a fabulous Skype opportunity we had with Ms. Hachen’s class from Kansas. This year we were not quite ready to chat with a “stranger” class yet, so Ms. Turken and I figured out a way to have our first graders learn what to do–with each other!
We had a plan to share our dot creations with each other, as well as prep kiddos for our Skype journey for this year. We started our Friday with a quick flip chart to introduce kiddos to what Skype actually is and how it works. We practiced how we would have a greeter (we decided the helper for the week could easily do this); how they would come to the computer and what they would say; as well as what everyone else should do while it’s not their turn (spoiler: they should sit quietly and watch and listen!). I even gave them a few seconds to do that crazy thing that kiddos always do when they first see themselves on the screen; allowing them to make faces and be goofy for a minute helped quell that desire for once we actually got started.
After we had practiced the procedure and were ready to receive our call, the Skype call rang. But when we answered there was only a black screen on the other end. Ms. Turken and I troubleshooted for probably close to 10 minutes, and Rm. 111 friends were AMAZING while they waited for us to figure out what to do. Jeremiah even had some super ideas about how we could fix the problem (great job, kiddo!), but somehow nothing could get our friends’ faces on our screen. 😦 Eventually, since they were just in the classroom next door, we decided to do this Skype in person. Yep, it was a first for us, too. 🙂
We headed over with our dots in hand and got all set up.
And..perhaps the best part of the whole deal was when Ms. Turken had the brilliant idea of building a computer out of blocks so kiddos would know where to do and what to do. It was GENIUS and kiddos did a super job! Check it out (in pictures first and then a rather long, but super cute video!):
I was so impressed with how well they did, how the mostly were quiet and listening, and how I am sure they’ll know what to do when it’s “for real.” YAY!!
And speaking of Dot Day creations, here they are. Can’t wait ’til they are up and displayed for us to see! Of course, I’ll share again once that happens, but they were too good to keep to myself!
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Aren’t those amazing? And you know, they so inspired me that I had to join in. I didn’t do it on actual Dot Day (hope that’s ok), but I did indeed make my mark and make a dot creation with my daughter today (who is also a first grader!).
I’m excited to see them all hanging up soon, inspiring us EVERY DAY to make our marks! 🙂
Oh my goodness–one of my FAVORITE DAYS of the whole school year (maybe even the whole year) happened last week: International Dot Day 2017!
We choose to celebrate in first grade on September 14th (Thursday) because of a crazy schedule on Friday that would cut into our time to play and create. Every year it seems the day gets bigger and bigger (I believe this is my 3rd Dot Day), and this year was no exception. Check out what we did! (And a little warning that this post might be a wee bit long and meaty!)
We started our day with a reading of the book by Peter H. Reynolds that sparked the whole thing in the first place, The Dot. And who better to read it to us than Peter himself?? My favorite part of the video we watched was when he read the cover and said, “The Dot. By me. ” HA! Bet that’s SO COOL to read a book you wrote. He also shared the story about how he got the idea for the book (ask your kiddo about that one–I’ll bet they remember it!) Anyhow, moving along…
After we talked about the story, and how the character Vashti used grit and encouragement with her friend, as well as what it means to make your mark, we added in another video—this time a song–that helped us further the idea. Have you ever met Emily Arrow? She created a genre of music called “kidtlit tunes” and first grade kiddos met her on Dot Day as they learned her song that she wrote about the book we had just read. We’ll probably get through ALL of her books and songs by the end of the year because they are just that good. Check her out on YouTube if you haven’t yet! Here’s the one we sang together:
After we had sung (and danced!) a couple of times to that catchy tune, we were ready to do our first (of a series) of dot-related activities, and we made our mark with some art. I shared a flip chart to get the creative juices flowing, if they weren’t already:
Kids got to “shop” from the table filled with LOADS of art materials and then get busy with their creation.
Even before they were finished they made me so happy just laying out to dry:
Later, after lunch, we HAD to do math with dots. 🙂 And you know what is shaped like dots? SKITTLES! We had been working on sorting and graphing anyway, so it just made sense. And then–there was a Dot Day snack!
Whew! By that point we had already had LOADS of Dot Day fun, but it wasn’t over yet! After we came back from specials, we returned to the fun with Dot Day Games! We had collected Connect 4, checkers and Twister from families and other classes. Kiddos got to choose which they wanted to do on a chart:
Then they got busy with more Dot Day–even I got in on the fun and played a few rounds of Connect 4 with Celia. 🙂
I have add a couple more pictures–the dots that kiddos WORE for Dot Day!! I didn’t remember to take it until the very end and so you can’t really see many of them, but trust, me–these kiddos were decked out and READY to celebrate. Check out Campbell’s shirt–he made it especially for the day, and Sarah who had dots on her dress AND her socks! Wow!!
Ok…well, our Dot Day was not really over, but there was TOO MUCH FUN for one day, so I’ll share part two in another post. Whew! Thanks for lasting all the way to the end! 🙂
I hope that you have already enjoyed the story of our Dot Day 2016 celebration, but if not, you might want to check that out first, and then you will have an even better idea of how we got here. This is an update–one thing I forgot to share (what??) and our amazing paintings that weren’t ready to share yet. Believe me, these MARKS are amazing!
First our favorite parts of Dot Day (not surprisingly, it was the DOTS for most kiddos!)
Now the BEST part. 🙂 We made dots and watched them splatter…and we wrote about them, too!
If you follow Dot Day or you have been to the official website, then you know the date for Dot Day is advertised as “Sept 15th-ish.” Now being a fan of the Reynolds brothers, I figure there’s probably a joke in there because of their amazing book Ish, but I also love that it probably just means teachers can have some freedom in when they celebrate. I mean, we all know that things like that can rarely fit so nicely right into our schedules.
We were able to take advantage of a great Skype invitation from Ms. Hachen’s 2nd Grade Ms. Hachen’s 2nd Grade class to take place on Sept. 15th, and so in order to have something to talk to our new friends about on that morning at 9 am, we did our “official” Dot Day work the day before. If you have visited 20somethingkids before, then you know Skyping is not a new thing to my kiddos, BUT this was to be the first one this particular class had made. I was excited and I’m pretty sure that until it happened, many of them didn’t know what we were doing. LOL
Ms. Hachen and I had planned to have our kiddos share their dot art, and tell the rest of the class what they decided to do to “make their mark.” We gathered on the floor in front of our screen and computer, and oh my goodness I wish I would have taken a video of what happened next. You can imagine I’m sure…I turned on Facetime just to give them an idea of what it would look like once we got started and everyone started making faces at themselves in the camera, putting bunny ears on their friends, waving their hands…you get the idea? I mean I guess I couldn’t really blame them–if you have never seen yourself on screen before like that and you are a 6YO, you’re probably going to do something goofy, right? So I asked them to get all those sillies out and then we waited patiently for our friends to call. They did, and we listened to our new friends from Kansas (hey, they’re our neighbors!) tell us about their Dot Day creations.
It looked and sounded a little like this:
You know, I love it when I watch videos of things that happen in our classroom, because I often notice or see new things that I didn’t notice in the moment. Honestly, I remembered that many kiddos were NUTS and had a hard time being patient as we watched and listened, and I remembered having to give many reminders for them to be respectful audience members. I’m so glad to see that most of them did a GREAT job of waiting, and am not surprised to see that there are still some who REALLY wanted to show off their art work. I’m going to take that as a sign that they were really proud–and that we need more practice with Skype. LOL No worries, we will get lots of that as we go through this year. 🙂
When we were finished with our Skype, we had some other things to do (like regular 1st grade curriculum stuff!), but we came back to another art challenge later in the afternoon. I had seen a blog post about creating a circle painting with your class and wanted to try it. After all the paint fun we’d had the day before (did I mention that we had to throw three kiddos’ clothes in the washer?), I needed to figure another way to make it work.
We didn’t exactly follow the directions, as we didn’t use paint, and I didn’t have them only paint circles, but we did indeed work together to make our marks on a class art piece together. That was really my big idea anyway, regardless of the medium.
So, we started with a big yellow piece of paper, 8 kiddos and a box of markers.
They were given 30 seconds to work at the part of the paper that was in front of them, and then we rotated around the table. They were supposed to add something new to the picture that they moved to next.
Not only did we create a BEAUTIFUL art piece together, but not a single person fussed during this time, nor did anyone argue, fight over a spot, or not follow directions. It was quiet, ran smoothly and kiddos seemed like there were really enjoying themselves! They took this “making our mark together” business really seriously. 🙂
And then when we were finished (we went through three rounds of 8 kiddos each), we had to do the most important part–sign it!
I have not had a chance to frame it yet, nor have I decided where to hang it (we should decide on that together, I think!), but I am surely impressed with what we were able to do. My favorite part? When I heard Johnny say to me as he rotated to the next spot, “I think this is supposed to be a carnival, so I’m going to add part to the roller coaster!” What a great example of paying attention to others’ intentions. Saw that happening all over the place after he said it. Way to go Johnny and Rm. 202 friends!
Just for fun, a few closer looks:
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Ok, and just one more. It was a good thing we had Double Dot Day, because on actual Dot Day I wore stripes to school. I know, wah wah. 😦 But I remembered the next time and was excited to sport the RIGHT outfit!
Oh, and look–they’re even DOUBLE DOTS!! Like it was meant to be. 🙂
What a great couple of days focusing on reading and creativity, helping and working together! Thanks for reading and ’til next year, keep on make, make, making your mark!!
I have been a fan of Dot Day for a few years, and tried with my last couple of classes. Last year was the first year I seemed to get it on the blog, though, sharing our dot paintings and writing pieces that graced our hallway all year. They really were amazing. But as I went into this year’s Dot Day, I wanted to see what else there was out there to connect to the day and to the book it’s created from: The Dot by Peter Reynolds.
Because of my participation in most things Twitter, I found out about some great resources to use for Dot Day activities, and even had a place to share our Dot Day fun! I was geared up for an even better Dot Day than last year, and when the day came, kiddos were as excited as me!
We started the day by reviewing our plans and then, of course, reading the story! And who better to share the story of The Dot than the author himself? Yep! We had Peter Reynolds read to us from this video on YouTube:
After that, I actually reread to Rm. 202 kiddos again, to make sure they “got” the story and so we could discuss what was actually happening and also how this story perfectly connects to our Robinson Mindset:
We used some discussion questions that had been shared with me from my Twitter friend Ms. Hachen, and these really helped us understand Vashti’s problem, how she solved it and then how she made her mark on someone else in the same situation.
Then we enjoyed a song. Two or three times because it was so great. 🙂
And then after we got the point of the day and our minds were focused on dots and making our mark, we got busy actually DOING it!
I had put together a flipchart to give kiddos a visual of their art options:
and basically anything that was round, or could make a dot was fair game. And once they got busy creating, we were AMAZED at what we could do! We made dots and watched them splatter. 🙂 And thanks again to the AMAZING Ms. Mimlitz who was our photographer and took some great action shots of our work!
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The final products are not quite ready to share (since I want to wait until they’re all hanging up and our writing is finished!) but you’ll get the idea as you check out our creative process. 🙂
Later on, it was time to have some more active Dot Day fun…
This was both Dot Day-related, as well as a great opportunity for us to continue to practice managing our bodies and using self-control as we work together!
After we had made our physical marks, thought about how we were like Vashti and could make a mark on the world, we did some reflecting through writing using this sheet:
We have done first drafts on these sheets, and will revisit and revise them next week so they can hang along with our paintings. I can’t wait to share them!
We had had a day full of DOT fun, and we had to end it with one more run through of the Dot Day Song. Just because it was so great! And we’ve all been singing it since then. 🙂
A little while ago we celebrated a special day along with many thousands of other kids and teachers around the world: Dot Day. The idea is simple: read and enjoy the book The Dot with your class and then explore the story creatively–in any way you want. Easy peasey, right? Sign us up!!
So we read the story, and talked about what it meant to “make your mark.” And since we’re Roadrunners, kiddos brought up the ideas of grit, growth mindset and making mistakes. Who knew there was so much to learn in a story about a girl and a painting? Ok, so I knew it was all in there. Hee hee. I’m just super impressed that my students came up with it before I even told them. Way to go, Rm. 202 friends!
After we were done reading and talking, I set them loose to work their magic. With paint. Or markers. Or colored pencils, or crayons–whatever they wanted to use to show their creativity was fine by me. And show us they did!
Check it out:
We weren’t done there, though. Nope. Had to do some writing about it, of course! So kiddos were given a sheet to help them think through how they would explain their work. Basically I wanted to give kiddos the support with sentence starters (if they needed it), as well as the structure of understanding what they could actually explain about the process (sometimes 2nd graders just want to tell you one sentence and be done).
Kiddos were instructed to complete a rough draft (which was made of four parts: When I read The Dot, it made me think of….; So I decided to make…; I used…; and I want to make my mark by…). On the second day of work we had to have a conversation about what it meant to be “done,” because like I mentioned before, some kiddos thought just saying “I used paint” would be a thorough explanation of what they did. I showed them my sheet–all filled out–and we discussed the thinking I did in order to decide what to say, as well as how to use the organizer correctly. The lesson here was simple: if you are given 4 lines to write your ideas upon, then you should write 4 lines of words. Well, it seemed simple at least, but was not so obvious as you might think. Once they finally had a rough draft, they were then to work by themselves or with their elbow partner to revise and edit their work before creating their final draft on special “Dot” paper. This was perfectly tied into the writing cycle we were working through and was a nice picture of how writing doesn’t just happen during one set time of day.
It took us a week to all finish our writing, and then we were ready to share. I was happy to see how well it all fit in our hallway, using the windows and the one vertical part of the wall. Perfect space-wise, and perfect because we (and everyone who walks through our hallway) get to be inspired by our dots every day!
and basically anything that was round, or could make a dot was fair game. And once they got busy creating, we were AMAZED at what we could do! We made dots and watched them splatter. 🙂 And thanks again to the AMAZING Ms. Mimlitz who was our photographer and took some great action shots of our work!
20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher 