"Forget yourself and become one with nature! Obliterate yourself with polka dots!" - Yayoi Kusama
Shapes and patterns are sprinkled all throughout the natural world. Slowing down to look for these patterns in nature is a terrific way to help kids build observation skills and connect to the artistic beauty in herent in nature. Discovering familiar shapes and patterns can even inspire an emotional response. In fact, researchers have discovered that people all over the world experience feelings of joy when looking at and interacting with round shapes, like spirals, ovals and circles.
Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, often called the "princess of polka dots" is renowned for her paintings, sculptures and installations featuring dots. As featured in our August Activity Calendar, in this activity, kids take inspiration from Kusama's work as they create dot art using objects from nature.
If you do not yet have your free copy of the August Activity Calendar, download it here.
The Guide
Explore dots: We love the book Yayoi Kusama Covered Everything in Dots and Wasn't Sorry by Fausto Gilberti as a way to introduce kids to the art of Yayoi Kusama. If you can, look at images of Kusama's dot art together. Walk around your home space and look for dots and circles together. Look for dots in nature: Wonder, "Do you think we could find dots outside?"Head outside together and look for dots and circles in nature. Look up and down. Flip over leaves. Look closely at flowers. Search around in the dirt. What shapes and patterns do you see?
Collect dots: Say, “Do you think we could make some dot art together? What objects from nature could we use to make dots?” Search around your outdoor space and/or home for natural materials that could create dots. If your child is unsure if something will make a dot, suggest that you collect it and give it a try to find out! Here are some ideas:
Kitchen ingredients: sliced rounds of cucumber, carrot, onion, potato, orange, lemon, grape, corn kernel, or end of a stalk of kale or other leafy green.
Round rocks or pebbles
Center of a flower
Round leaves
Acorn cup
Round seashells
End of a stalk from a plant
Choose your “paint”: Dots can be made with water, mud, store-bought paint, or you can make your own pigment from spices and berries.
Choose your “canvas”: If using water, you can make marks on a dark colored surface, like stone or pavement. If using mud, paint or pigment made from natural objects, make your dots on paper or a piece of fabric.
Make dot art: Invite your child to test out each of the objects they collected to see what kind of dots they make. Which ones make big dots? Small dots? Which ones leave an outline of a circle vs. a solid dot? Can your child fill up their canvas with dots? Make a pattern of shapes, sizes or colors with dots? Create a different shape, design or picture made of dots?
Why is this activity great for kids?
One fun way to keep kids always ready to make shapes is to keep an eye out for shapes in nature. Recognizing and naming shapes and patterns is super helpful for kids’ future learning, not only about geometry or design but about how we use symbols to read, write and communicate. And, shapes are a tool for helping kids learn to direct and hold their focus.
By creativity, we mean the ability to both imagine original ideas or solutions to problems and actually do what needs to be done to make them happen. So, to help kids develop creativity, we parents need to nurture kids' imaginations and give them lots of chances to design, test, redesign and implement their ideas.
"Creativity is as important now in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
Why, you ask? For one, it is through being creative that a person is able to get senses, sensibility and spirit working together. Simply put, without creativity, we don't think our kids will live a full life.
On a more practical level, it's also the means by which humans of all ages make an impact on the world and other people around them. A lot of heavy stuff is going to go down in our kids' lifetime, and their generation will need to imagine and implement solutions to big and very complicated problems. Although our kids are still far from public office or the boardroom, today's political and business leaders worldwide are already pointing to creativity as the most important leadership quality for the future.
Although years from the art studio or design lab, little kids can learn to think and act creatively if you give them time and the right practice.
Naturalist
Category:
Thinking Skills
What is a Naturalist?
The oldest and simplest definition, “student of plants and animals,” dates back to 1600. The term has evolved over time, it's importance changing as the values of dominant culture have changed. 400 years after that old definition, Howard Gardner, the paradigm-shifting education theorist, added “naturalist” to his list of “multiple intelligences.” Gardner challenged the notion that intelligence is a single entity that results from a single capability. Instead, he recognizes eight types of intelligence, all of which enable individuals to think, solve problems or to create things of value. To Gardner, the Naturalist intelligence enables human beings to recognize, categorize and draw upon certain features of the environment.
A true naturalist has not simply Googled and learned the names of plants, animals, rocks, etc. Rather, he or she has had direct experience with them, coming to know about them and using all senses to develop this intelligence. A naturalist also has a reverence for nature, valuing and caring for living things from the smallest mite to the tallest tree. A naturalist comes to not only knowing the creatures and features of his or her environment, but treasuring them in thought and action.
Why does it matter?
In the process of becoming a naturalist, children become stewards of nature, a connection that is associated with a range of benefits, including greater emotional well-being, physical health and sensory development (not to mention the benefits to nature itself!). In a world in which primary experience of nature is being replaced by the limited, directed stimulation of electronic media, kids senses are being dulled and many believe their depth of both their interest in and capacity to understand complicated phenomena are being eroded. To contrast, the naturalist learns about the key features of their natural environment by using all of his senses and be interpreting open-ended and ever-changing stimuli.
Age: 0 to 8+
Time: 1 hour+
Materials: objects from nature; water, mud and/or paint; paper or fabric
