What is International Dot Day?
International Dot Day is based around Peter H Reynold’s beautiful book, The Dot. It’s a day for classes to explore the story’s powerful themes of bravery, creativity, and self-expression.
Every year, millions of teachers and pupils connect on International Dot Day to celebrate creativity, courage and collaboration.
Every child in our school took part in this special day in different ways. Eagles read the book as part of their guided reading sessions, and discussed its themes and message in depth. Bears and Dragons enjoyed hearing the book read to them at story time.
The Dot tells the story of a caring art teacher who reaches a reluctant student in a remarkably creative way.
In the book, the teacher encourages the student to begin a journey of self discovery and creativity, starting with a simple dot on a piece of paper. Transformed by this journey, the student goes on to inspire others.
The themes that Eagles detected in the book were:
- Don’t be frightened to have a go
- Everyone can make their mark
- Everyone is good at something, but we’re all good at different things
- It’s important to encourage others
- Every journey starts with a small step
- If you think you can, you can – if you think you can’t, you can’t!
With those messages in mind, all the classes enjoyed a special art lesson with Mrs Eldridge to ‘make their mark’. These included colour mixing, experimenting with shades of colours and creating different shades, working carefully to incorporate detail, thinking imaginatively about what a dot could be, and creating 3D dot structures.
We love the way our artwork turned out – come and see our Dot Day displays in the hall, and see what you think! I’m sure you’ll agree that every one of us ‘made our mark’ on International Dot Day!