Pre-K children enrolled in All Saints’ Episcopal School’s Early Childhood Program recently donned their math goggles and engaged in a counting activity using the visual arts as a lens.

The children learned about and viewed several images of the artwork of Georges Seurat, the French pointillist painter known for his “dotted” artwork. The children marveled at the multitude of colorful dots they could discern up-close in his works, but would then seem to disappear when viewed from afar.

Using Do-A-Dot markers, students created their own colorful pointillist art. With their “math goggles” on, they then counted and compared the number of colored dots in their and their classmates’ masterpieces.

The children then engaged in a game of “I Spy” whereby they viewed Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (1884-1886) and were challenged to locate various objects appearing in the painting, including one pink butterfly, two soldiers, three dogs, at least five parasols, etc. We ended class by reading the inspirational story by Peter Reynolds entitled, “The Dot.”