Themed Idea
GETTING CREATIVE FOR CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH WEEK
As a lot of Emotion Works schools will be getting creative from 1st February with the Place2Be’s Children’s Mental Health Week, we thought we’d help out by sharing some cog art ideas inspired by ‘The Dot’ by Peter H. Reynolds.
Hopefully you’ll find something on this page to help you add in some Cog Creativity to your learning this week.
But if dots and artwork aren’t your thing, choose something else creative from your list of ideas for Keeping the Blues Away last week. Why do you think spending time being creative is good for your mental health?
From the Place2Be’s website:
The theme of this year’s Children’s Mental Health Week is Express Yourself.
Expressing yourself is about finding ways to share feelings, thoughts, or ideas, through creativity. This could be through art, music, writing and poetry, dance and drama, photography and film, and doing activities that make you feel good.
USING 'THE DOT' STORY TO INSPIRE COG CREATIVITY
'The Dot' Read Aloud
Here’s a link to a read-aloud version of ‘The Dot’ by Peter H. Reynolds. It’s a story about a child who discovers her creativity after being encouraged by her teacher to get started by simply making a mark.
This is a very popular book and there are lots of creative ideas shared on the internet about it you might like to explore. Do any of the ideas help you think up a good idea for some cog creativity? Use cog colours. Use dots and circles and cog shapes. Use hearts and rainbows too if the mood takes you.
We’d love to see your cog creations so feel free to post them in the comment box at the bottom of the page.
Ready Steady Draw, with Peter H. Reynolds
Or just see where else a dot and your imagine takes you to make an interesting piece of cog artwork.
SOME DOTTY IDEAS FOR COG CREATIVITY
Use 'Pointillism' for colouring in
We found this heart and rainbow colouring activity on the internet by searching up ‘pointillism for kids’. Pointillism is a kind of art that uses lots and lots of dots to make a picture. Artists use a paintbrush and special paint for their dots but it also works with cotton buds and watercolour paint, coloured pencils, marker pens, finger paints or even little dots of play-dough.
The link for this activity is on The Crafting Chicks website, but there are lots of other places you could find similar ideas.
Try drawing your own cog, rainbow and heart shapes to colour in with lots of dots.
Dots n' Spots
Here’s art idea that you could use to inspire some cog art using dots and spots. We found it at The Art Classroom.
Did you make a cog template yet? (see Slideshow 1 at the bottom of the starter page on this website). Use the cog template to draw some cog shapes to create a similar effect with dots and spots.
Make a single cog piece of art or try a cog model picture using this technique.
Pointillism Tutorial
Watch ‘Pointillism Introduction‘ on Mrs Swinney’s Art Class channel.
If you’ve made a cog template using Slideshow 1 at the bottom of the starter page on this website, draw around it to make a cog shape, or draw one free hand.
Use pointillism to create one or more of the Emotion Cogs. Can you use the technique to make your cog appear 3D?
some More ideas from the place2be website
Draw your feelings
Maybe you’ve done something like this at school linked to the Red ‘Body Sensations’ Cog?
Here’s a similar idea using collage materials which might make
The squiggle game
We know your school assemblies haven’t been the same recently, with no big gatherings allowed and no singing, which we think is a really sad thing.
But maybe this can be a time to sing again if your school is planning virtual assemblies during lockdown because we’re allowed to sing at home – hooray! Maybe some of you might feel brave enough to perform your own version of the song live or on video and send it to your teacher to share. Don’t forget to add some actions to go with your words so everyone can join in from home too.
