Happy Dot Day!

For many years now, I have opened the school year with the story "The Dot," by Peter H. Reynolds. It is an inspirational story that so many young (and old) artists can relate to when trying to overcome self-doubt while making art.  It is something I need reminding of, too, in my own work and when promoting my students to push themselves more than they think they can go. 

​This year, I to jump into the story of "The Dot" by having students use Batik to dye scarves. This was a risk, as I have not done this with students in this way before, but it was well worth it. You can hear more about the process in the video below (and the images, too):

To start, we watched the story as a class and had a group discussion about the meaning of the project. This was a great way to get everyone's defenses down about being creative and approaching our own dot activity.

To start, students received their materials as pairs. As pairs, students used dowels, cups, and other circular objects to apply the resist material to their scarves (the scarves were folded in half so they would end up being symmetrical). 

After a day of drying, students selected three colors to use for dying their scarves. They used bamboo brushes to apply the dye to the work. This was done until the scarves were filled with color.

After a day of letting the dye set, students rinsed out the resist in a series of three buckets. I released students by table to do this. Once dry, we were able to marvel at the beauty of the white dotted marks littering the gradations of color dyed into the material. 

I hope everyone had an awesome Dot Day! I am very excited that these scarves are now going to be for sale during Parent Teacher Conferences and the BCFAB craft fair to benefit our Art and STEM program. 

​If you are interested in learning more, please ask!