"The Dot is the story of a caring teacher who dares a doubting student, Vashti, to trust in her own abilities by being brave enough to “make her mark”. What begins with a small dot on a piece of paper becomes a breakthrough in confidence and courage, igniting a journey of self-discovery and sharing, which has gone on to inspire countless children and adults around the globe." (http://www.thedotclub.org/dotday/get-started)
It has a great message for both children and teachers! It teaches us to celebrate our creativity and build confidence in our own abilities! It also shows how powerful our encouragement and our words can be! We can use words to build others up or criticize them. In this classroom, we are working to build each other up through our words and actions! In addition, the book teaches us that creating art is more about the process than the product. Each child's creation is going to look different than his/her classmates--and that's a good thing! The book encourages the children to "Make your mark and see where it takes you!"
Here are some ways we celebrated our creativity, made our marks, and saw where they took us!
To go along with learning about dots, the kindergartners learned about lines through the book, Lines that Wiggle by Candace Whitman.
We practiced making different types of lines on our whiteboards! It was tricky making the lines go from one edge of the board to the other but they kept working at it! 
Next, the students created their own dots using their initials. First, students traced a cardboard circle onto a white piece of paper and wrote the first initial of their name on the inside. 
Next, they outlined their dot and initial using black sharpie marker. I was so impressed with their concentration as they worked to trace over their pencil marks!
Here is where their line practice came in handy--they decorated their circle using as many different lines as they wanted. The only stipulation was that they had to start on a black line and end on a black line. Boy did they have fun with this! They loved developing different variations of lines and using colors and patterns to make them special and unique. They were so proud of their work!
After that, they used scissors to cut on the black line of their circle (talk about focus!) Finally, they glued them to their selected color of construction paper and decorated around the outside--most of the students chose to continue using lines here as well!
Here are their finished dots on display in the hallway!
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It wasn't just kindergarten that hopped on the Dot Day train--all of the Hillel students took part in it!
Every student had the chance to create two dots for our dot mobile!
And the dot borders and painting in the middle of this display? Another collaboration between all of the students! Here are the kindergartners working together to create their dot murals!
The dot artwork along the top of the display and the creations on a table nearby were created by Mrs. Hoy's class. How cool!
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To get our muscles involved in International Dot Day, Mrs. Hoy and Mrs. Hentschel taught us a game called "The Dot Game"--clever name, huh? ;)
A course was set with a start line and finish line. Next, we split the students into teams of 3 or 4. Each team received a stack of large paper circles, or 'dots'. Each team got one more dot than they had players on their team. The object of the game is to race the other teams to the finish line, but you can only step on the dots. If somebody steps on the floor, their whole team had to start over. The kids had a blast working together to reach the finish line (even if it meant having to start over a couple times!)
What a fun celebration!
