Kindergarten and Grade 1 Experiences at Rosser Elementary
Students have been working very hard this term on their academic subjects so I wanted to share some of the fun activities that they have been enjoying during their play-based times. As I am sure you are aware, a great deal of important learning occurs when children interact with each other in socially co-operative ways. Check out a few of our ‘centres’:
Cars racing around a well designed track,
some little friends dropped by to play,
and there was a verrrrry interesting dinosaur book!
We have all been enjoying a great week with Marcus, our tennis instructor. Students have been working on valuable tennis skills while enjoying a play-based instructional setting. Tomorrow is our last class for this year.
You should have received a pink half-sized notice today telling you of the date and time of the airing of our segment on Breakfast TV. In case it went missing, the date is Monday, April 9th – approximately at 8:45 a.m. Luckily Monday is a school holiday and we are home to see it. I have already set my PVR! I hope you get a chance to see it.
This is a reminder that our tennis lessons are next week (Monday – Thursday). This is a programme that our students have enjoyed for several years. It is also quite a bargain to have professional tennis instruction at a low cost. Please complete and return the signed permission slip with your cheques by Monday.
We have a confirmed time for the assembly tomorrow. It will be right after Recess (approximately 10:50 a.m.). Students will be called to the gym for the presentation of the cheque and then to do their performance. Parents are very welcome to come to see this exciting opportunity that our students have to perform for a television station. We all look forward to seeing the final clip that they produce and air on their television show. We will let you know when that date will be so we can all set our TV’s to ‘record’.
This Friday (March 30th) Breakfast Television will be visiting our school to film our Fine Arts assembly, interview a few Grade 7 students, and look at some art samples on the various class bulletin boards. They will produce a 3 minute video which will be shown on their TV show at a later date. You will be notified of the date of this airing when we know.
They will also be giving us our ‘winnings’ from the contest that we entered. This money will be used to further our great Fine Arts programme.
All parents are welcome to attend our assembly on Friday. I will let you know the exact time when the details are finalized. This will hopefully be done by tomorrow.
Today we had a fun and exciting learning experience at Science World. Arriving via school bus we began our day in the visiting Dinosaur exhibit room. We were thrilled to see the life-sized models of some dinosaurs that we have learnt about – and some others that we hadn’t.
Triceratops is always a favourite as he is an herbivore but one who doesn’t let Tyrannosaurus Rex – the greatest meateater of the last era of the Dinosaur Age (the Cretaceous Period) – get the better of him.
We were not too surprised to see Velociraptor shown with feathers as we have learnt that our modern-day birds are descendents of the dinosaurs. Still, it is a little unnerving to think of a 6 foot tall meat-eating ‘bird’ running around!
When we were finished in the Dinosaur Room we went across the hall and spent some fun time exploring the Search Gallery. Students really enjoyed roaming around the beaver lodge and exploring inside the hollow tree. We met up with the other two divisions in the lunch room for our meal break.
We wandered up the long, long ramp (200 metres) to the Omnimax Movie Theatre where we enjoyed the large movie screen and the film Dinosaurs Alive! This film really explained how fossils were often trapped under soil due to monsoons, flash floods, or land slides. Some dinosaur remains were found in positions that showed they had been in a conflict situation at the time – i.e. two dinosaurs trapped together in mid-fight – or when they were protecting their nests of eggs.
After the movie we explored the Eureka! gallery, the Lego Exhibit, and the puzzle tables on the main floor before collecting our coats and heading outside to the bus. The students were well behaved and were very keen on the whole experience. All in all, it was a very fun and enjoyable day!
As you know we have re-scheduled this trip for Tuesday, March 27th. Unfortunately, when we re-booked the date the workshops were all full. You should have received your $1.00 refund which I sent home yesterday.
We will still be travelling by school bus, seeing the Dinosaur Alive movie, and enjoying the dinosaur exhibits. As we needed to change the date we may still have a spot available for a parent helper to join us. If you are available on this date please send me an email. My email address is available on the home page of this blog.
We are all looking forward to this trip as a wonderful way to wrap up our dinosaur unit. The students have learned a lot of great information. They are now very knowledgeable about dinosaurs!!
For our Art programme this year we have been studying the elements of art. We are currently exploring ‘value’. Students have learned that value refers to the varying degrees of ‘lightness’ and/or ‘darkness’ an object possesses. We began by choosing coloured construction paper and using a piece of white chalk and a black wax crayon to experiment with differing pressures to show the different values on the paper.
Students then used a piece of white paper and a black wax crayon to create a picture of their choice. The criteria was that they needed to show different levels of value – some parts of their pictures were lighter or darker than other parts. This resulted in a quite dramatic effect in their work.
Hopefully you will get a change to come by and check out the two bulletin boards outside of our classroom. They create quite a contrast between the colourful Monets and the monochromatic ‘black and white’ pictures.
Last week we took a close look at some of the paintings by a wonderful French Impressionist painter – Claude Monet. We saw photos of his actual garden in France (which has been maintained as a heritage site) and then we looked at a number of paintings that he did of that garden. Monet painted many pictures of the same scene at different times of the day to show how the light altered the look of the different paintings. Monet had a fondness for his pond with its water lillies – and, of course, his footbridge.
Students began with a simple pencil sketch of the bridge which they then went over with a thick layer of blue oil pastel. Using various colours of green oil pastels they then added a collection of trees, bushes, and shrubs on the sides of the ‘pond’ area and behind the bridge. They needed to colour the ones behind the bridge in between the bridge supports and not colour on top of the blue bridge. The last part that students used the oil pastels for was the addition of green lily pads with coloured lillies attached. Students were encouraged to add one white lily even though this was hard to see on the white paper.
The next day students did a paint ‘wash’ over the entire picture using either a light or dark blue paint disc. Students noticed that the paint coloured in between the oil pastels and did not stick well to the pastels. The overall effect is quite stunning – don’t you agree?
