The Dot

Read the The Dot by Peter Reynolds.

This book is about inspiring creativity and innovation in students. In this age of standardization of what teachers teach and how students learn, this book counters that and inspires students to “make their mark” in a unique, special, unrehearsed way.

Vashti, the main character, struggles to express herself in art class. She makes her mark by drawing just a dot, and from there her imagination and creativity shows her that her dot is more than just a dot.

Dot Day is celebrated September 15th-ish. (This is a play-on-words by Peter Reynolds who wrote the book.)

Students can also watch a video of the book.

The Dot

The Dot (TuscolaCUSD301)

Other ways we celebrated International Dot Day include:

Our school art teacher had each student bring in a white T-shirt and classes painted the shirts with dots. All students and staff wore their “dot gear” on Friday.

Students drew a simple black dot in the middle of a white piece of construction paper. From there, the sky was the limit to what students created. Students used materials like glitter, paint, puzzle pieces, beads, feathers, crayons, markers, and newspaper.

I gave each student a page of colored yard sale dot stickers. Students created a shape or figure using the stickers.

In math, I set a timer for one minute. Students drew as many dots as possible in one minute. Afterwards, we took a gallery walk and students wrote estimates of how many dots were drawn on classmates’ papers. We used regular 8.5 x 11 paper for dots and post-its for estimates.