Dot Day across borders

From the beginning of the session kids made it clear that we will have two groups.

The boys decided to make a monster that was unleashed by a mean king who was destroying the other Kingdom. The monster ate the king and his army and in the end a hero destroyed the monster and become the king.
The girls made an apple laptop. They were inspired by our zoom connection so they decided to make one for themselves. It was such a neat idea to use the toy box as a screen and convert the butter box into mouse.

As the Zimbabwe facilitators, we learnt that we often underestimate the depth to which young people think through topical issues. Whilst one of our Dot Day teams created a piece titled “Overcoming the sea of life through teamwork” the other developed a collaborative piece that addressed the need for safe water and sanitation against the very real background of a national cholera outbreak. The participants worked well in communicating how to combine their individual ideas into meaningful team creations. They had fun as they explored materials and repurposed them. Egg crates were turned into staircases, cardboard cores into towers, plastic bottles into water tanks and beads into amazing jewels! The highlight was meeting young people from across the globe and learning that children everywhere love pizza!

After we read The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds, the participants wanted to start working immediately with the materials. They didn't want to stop for a snack and finally finished their individual Mark Masterpieces just 50 minutes before their presentation time to Portugal, Mexico and USA. The seven participants in England started their Team Creation by brainstorming favourite books, games and interests. The common theme was Mario Kart, aliens and space. They decided to create the surface of the moon complete with craters and mountains where a Mario Kart car would be driven by an alien. they divided into three teams and assigned themselves tasks. They did a superb job communicating between the teams and working under the pressure of only 40 minutes to finish their Team Creation.

Each participant of the team in Portugal presented his individual creation explaining what they did, why and what their interests are. They decided then to link all this information with the book. They choose their favourite material and gave a meaning to each part of the creation.

“At Dot Day we did a construction that represents the story of The Dot and expresses the main message of the book. We use a box, yarn, beads, elastics and pompons. On the box it is written, "Believe in yourself!" On the top of the box there is the main character of the book, Vashti. Ribbons are coming out of the box. Dark ribbons represent the people who do not believe in themselves and the clear and colorful ribbons represent the people who believe in themselves. The beads are the mark (The Dot) of each person. The braid symbolizes the union between the light and dark ribbons meaning that they have talked and understood each other and so all believe in themselves. The big pompom at the bottom represents the great dot that people who collaborate are able to do.”

Adriano, Afonso, Clara, Hugo, Joana e Pedro Henrique

Whitsett Elementary has been given the title of an Environmental Education STEAM school. With that name and edict, we decided that during Dot Day after reading the book and seeing what the UK and Portugal had created that we would go outside on a nature walk and see if NATURE might inspire the 'mark' we wanted to make. Students found a skull along the creek bed, that has now been identified as the remains of a mountain lion. Jose and his fellow classmate incorporated that into their 'path of following their dreams,' and their collaborative work. 3 female students working together, spearheaded by their leader Maryanne, used sticks and twigs and painted their canvas green to symbolize that we must 'make our mark' by taking care of our natural world. For others mixing media, like Mariany and Cole, enjoying the process of making the art was their way of enjoying 'Dot Day.' For another, he found his way of making his 'mark' was in the way he decorated his t-shirt that I had made all of them.  

The best comments from participating were "Wow they are really good at art!" "They look just like us!" "They speak English too?" "I wish we could do this again next Saturday!"