Art Inspired by Literature

At our school each grade level is given the opportunity to host a "Family Night" for their students and their families. November’s family night was hosted by our wonderful Kinder teachers. Can I just tell you how amazing and creative they are? They shared so many great ideas! The theme for their family night was “Art Night”! The students were so incredibly excited as were the teachers! Our Kinder team encouraged each grade level to create an art project to be displayed at family night. Walking into the cafeteria and seeing all of the artwork on display was incredible! After brainstorming and discussing the pros and cons of a few different ideas, my teammate and I were inspired by one of our favorite teachers that we both happen to follow on Instagram; CoreInspiration. We had just read the story "The Dot" by Peter H. Reynolds to our students to help teach them about finding the lesson in literature. If you haven't read this book yet, you should! It has such a wonderful lesson and our students fell in love with it! It's all about believing in yourself and believing in others. Our students felt such a strong connection to this; I heard them talking about it and relating it to their own lives all week long! After reading this story and discussing it as a class, we decided to create our art piece to go along with the story. Each student started out with a blank piece of paper and added simple "dots" just like Vashti did in the story. Once their papers were filled with dots, they began outlining them. After continuing this process several times all of the dots eventually came together to form their art piece for family night! Each student was so proud of the work that they had put in and were thrilled at how their project turned out. It was so fun to see each of their personalities shine through after starting with a simple little "dot." After we were finished with this story, I saw through the students how important it is to bring art into our classroom inspired by the literature we read! The lesson of this story stuck with each student and was so much more meaningful after they were able to create a piece of art that related to what they were learning. So often we get wrapped up into the standards and the task at hand that we forget how crucial these simple hands on projects are in our classrooms. They make such an impact on the every day learning that we do and stick with our students in more ways than we know. This gave my students a chance to bond, be creative and make memories together. We are so excited for our next piece that will be brought into the classroom!

Family Art Night

Students Working Together

Students Working

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Example 4

"Believe in yourself and in others."