Thank you to Gabriella's family who washed our paint shirts, mittens, and cleaning cloths over the weekend! 

Here are the children's fabulous self-portraits for the month of April.  Enjoy :)

The children have been creating some fantastic structures using the blocks and manipulatives.  Here are some photos of their creations over the past couple of weeks. 

Wow!  We collected so much food for the Campus Food Bank!  Thank you so much for your generous donations, for allowing us to use your wagons and carts on our delivery day, and for the parents who were able to stay and help with the food delivery.  As the children pushed their carts/pulled their wagons across campus I felt overwhelmed with pride!  The food bank was very excited when we arrived with our large food delivery.

Here is a link to the Campus Food Bank website: http://campusfoodbank.com 

I hope you enjoy the photos! 

Morning Class Reflections

"What was your favourite part of delivering food today?  How did it make your feel?"

Abd-ElRahman - I liked helping them.
Amelie - I liked pushing the cart.
Finn - I liked pulling the carts.
Jasper - I liked walking to the food bank.
Leia - I liked pushing the carts.  It was so bumpy.
Luka - I liked giving the food.
Megan - I liked pulling the wagon with Amelie.  It made me happy.
Nathan - I liked giving the food for them.
Tobias - I liked pushing the carts. 

Afternoon Class Reflections

"What was your favourite part of delivering food to the food bank?  How did it make your feel?"

Anna - I liked it when I was pushing the cart.
Avery - I liked pushing the cart.
Cooper - I felt good.
Dorine - Pushing the wagon felt good.
Elisha - hen I was helping Dorine pull the wagon it was good.
Jesse - I liked carrying the adventure backpack.
Kinan - I liked laughing with Aroh and Talha.
Lowyn - I felt happy by pushing the stroller.
Samantha - I liked that day.
Seth - I liked pushing the food with bumping peanut butter with Mommy. 

The wonderful librarians at the HT Coutts Library invited us back for a spring read-in.  They even ordered a children's carpet so we had something to sit on when we came :)  

Yesterday, the morning class was invited to attend a performance of the Malawian folktale, The Singing Chameleon.  The performance was put on by an undergraduate music and movement class.  The afternoon class then watched the performance on our SMART Board during class time.   

This was a fantastic opportunity for the children to see the possibilities of story acting - something we have been working on over the year.  Our story acting is very basic (the children acting out the characters in their peers' told stories); whereas in The Singing Chameleon the students had created costumes, a set, and used instruments for both sound effects and to accompany the song within the folktale. 

We had a great (and quick!) visit to 4Cats Art Studio on Monday.  The children created their own flower paintings, inspired by Van Gogh's sunflower work.  A big thank you to our parent volunteers who were able to come help on this trip!!   

The children first drew a table, vase, and then flowers on their canvases.  Then they chose the colours they wanted to use and carefully painted their drawings.  Lastly, dots and dashes were added to the backgrounds to create a textured look.  


At school we will extend their learning by examining sunflowers, reading books about the life cycle of these flowers, and sketching the flowers in our room.  Again, we will display their paintings in our room for a few weeks before they are sent home.  I will post photos of their finished work within a few days :) 

Before all of the splatter paintings got sent home we took photos so you could see all of the children's beautiful artwork.  Enjoy! 

Wow, are the children ever doing a great job of their self-portraits!  Here are their drawings from March.

Line Art

At the Art Gallery of Alberta we learned that there are four components to art: line, colour, shape, and texture.  This artwork is an extension of our learning. 

The children created their artwork by using different kinds of lines.  They first had to make their line with glue, and then chose the colour/type of string to use and carefully laid the string over their glue line.  The children came back to their artwork over a one-week period to add lines.

When we first discussed lines at the AGA, the children were asked, “What is a line?”  They came up with the following:
·      “A line of string.”
·      “A line of square and rectangle.”
·      “A line that makes shapes.”
·      “It could go straight or all over.”
·      “Feet can be a line.”
·      “Like a circle, that’s a line.”

At the AGA we learned how to describe lines, by using words such as:
·      Straight
·      Curvy
·      Twirly
·      Swirly
·      Zig Zag