Me on the Map

As part of our Social Studies unit on Canada, we created these awesome flip books showing where we live in the world. Steve Jenkins book, Looking Down, inspired our exploration. We began BIG, by looking at our planet, then zoomed in bit by bit until we finally arrived in our city, and school. We learned the symbols of our province and country along the way as well as some cool facts. Check out the great learning.

Rain Rain Go Away

A perfect spring project. With April showers upon us we had some fun creating rainy day art. Tracers were used to create the umbrella shape. Then, patterns and vibrant colours emerged to make many unique umbrellas! We used colourful fabric to cut out rain jackets and boots. The final step was the main event...splatter painting raindrops. We covered the umbrella and person with paper so they would stay dry. They turned out fabulous!

Lupines

Always a favourite activity of mine following a read through of Barbara Cooney's, Miss Rumphius. Unfortunately I didn't snap a photo of the display once the lupines were completed. Such a simple, but striking project. The children love using their fingertips to create their colourful lupines. Oil pastels in various shades of green were used to draw the long stems and leaves.

Paul Klee

While learning about 2D and 3D shapes in Geometry we read a little about artist Paul Klee, a Swiss-German painter.  His individual style was influenced by movements, expressionism, cubism and surrealism.

The painting above inspired our sharpie drawings done on the pages of an old book. Students painted in the shapes with colours of their choice.

  

Rabbityness

Check out our great splatter art inspired by Jo Empson's book cover - Rabbityness! First, rabbits were drawn on black construction paper and glued onto natural kraft paper. White crayons brought the rabbits to life, triangle noses and eyes! Then the fun part, splatter time.

Spring is in the Air

Lots of exploration and creativity at our spring table in March.  

Happy New Year!

Who doesn't love the start of a new year?  A blank slate, a fresh start, a new beginning, new memories to make.  It was wonderful to see all the smiling faces back in the classroom come January.  Although they may not have shouted it out, I heard the quiet conversations about missing school and being happy to be back.  Well, me too!

There was much excitement and many stories to share about the holidays, the ups, the downs, the expected and the unexpected.  The children were particularly keen to share their New Year's Eve stories with one another.  Through sharing, many questions were asked.  Here are some of them…
How late did you stay up?  Did you watch the ball drop?  What's the ball?  Did you break 'crackers'?  What was inside?  What is a 'cracker'?  Did you know it was the new year already in some countries before Canada?

I decided to go with their enthusiasm which launched into writing Holiday Newspapers, making 'crackers' so we could ring in the New Year together, and writing resolutions.  It was great fun.

To make the crackers, each child wrote a secret message of good cheer on a piece of paper.  They put their fortune and a lollipop inside a recycled toilet paper roll before rolling it up in a bright sheet of tissue paper.  They pinched the ends and tied them off with a ribbon.  All of the crackers were collected in a basket and saved for the end of the day.  Each student selected a random cracker and spread out around the classroom.  We counted down from ten and all pulled our crackers at the same time!  It was a lot of fun for them to read the kind message inside.

I photographed the children making 'party faces' as if they were ringing in the new year on New Year's Eve.  Once they were printed, each child decorated a party hat to adorn their portrait.  New Year's resolutions were written and attached to their portraits.  Don't forget to check out all of the resolutions on the bulletin board in the hallway.  We have some serious party goers in this crowd!

The class spent some time over two days planning, writing and illustrating their stories for the holiday newspapers.  Last Wednesday, we had a special Noisy Reading time.  Instead of reading books from the classroom library, students read each others newspapers.  We even snacked on timbits while reading!  It was a fun morning.

Writers hard at work on their stories!