Pixels and Pointillism

Placentinkers combined art and technology this month through our exploration of Pixels and Pointillism! We discovered that the pixels on a computer screen are just like the dots in a Pointillist painting! It was exciting to see students "connect the dots" between technology and art.

We started with the book Katie’s Sunday Afternoon by James Mayhew. Katie visits an art museum where she happens upon a room full of paintings that are made with little dots of color. Soon she steps into the paintings and delights us with her (mis)adventures with the characters in the paintings. We talked about the artwork of Pointillist artists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.

On the computer we zoomed in on a picture of a sunflower only to discover the thousands of pixels that made up the image.

Combining our knowledge of pixels and pointillism we created two forms of art. Chromebooks were used to create our own pixel art. And each class collaborated on creating a beautiful pointillism painting using bingo daubers! In addition there were other pixel and pointillism activities throughout the makerspace area.

The inclusion of art and technology in our makerspace moves us from STEM to STEAM in a very age-appropriate way. It provides our students with benefits such as promoting self-esteem, motivation, aesthetic awareness, cultural exposure and creativity.