St. Patrick’s Day

As this holiday will happen while we are on Spring Break we spent some time during the past two weeks doing some Irish activities.

We read some stories and did some art.  Students wrote out three wishes for what they would like if they caught a leprechaun.  They chose their most favourite wish and then created a shamrock depiction of that wish.

We also created layered shamrocks with three sizes of shamrocks on construction paper which were coloured with oil pastels in the shades of blue and green, with some added bits of gold/yellow.

We also have some ‘wee folk’ visiting the classroom.  They seem to like ‘hanging around’ …

May the luck of the Irish be with you.  I hope you all wear some green on March 17th – you wouldn’t want to get pinched …

Burnaby Arts Alive Programme

We spent time during February working on a project for the biennial Arts Alive competition.  This is open to elementary school classes every second year – alternate years with the secondary schools.  Every year there is a set theme.  This year’s theme was, “Place, Home”.

As we have been looking at aboriginal art styles this year we created a project that incorporated the coastline of our glorious province and the four different styles of aboriginal art: North Coast; Mid Coast; West Coast (outer part of Vancouver Island); and South Coast.  Each of the styles have similarities and differences mainly in reference to the shapes and the colours that are used.

Students each chose an animal which they practised drawing on their own.  They made a ‘good copy’ of it and then adorned it with the colours allowed from the style of their animal.

These animals were affixed to a canvas that was transformed into the coastline of BC.  A variety of different students painted (base or mottled top layers), separated cedar fronds, soaked off the title labels, or created the human pictures.  Cedar was chosen as a representation of how important this tree was to aboriginal peoples.  All in all it was a whole class project with everyone doing something to contribute.

Normally for Arts Alive each year every student would create an individual project from class lessons about the year’s theme.  The Jury Panel from the BAG comes to each school on a specific day in the final week and a few of the individual projects would be chosen to be taken to the Burnaby Art Gallery for their annual exhibition.  This year we were asked to do a whole class project with the idea that most, if not all, of the participating classes would have their project taken.

At Rosser our class, along with Divisions 1 and 2, participated this year.  The Jury Panel came on February 28th and each of the three divisions had their projects taken back to the Burnaby Art Gallery.  These collected works will be put on display for the Annual Exhibition.

The Opening Night for this exhibition will be on Thursday, April 13th at 6:00 p.m.  I will be there and I hope some of you can come to see the students’ great work.  The picture here doesn’t really show how great the individual animal pictures are – so seeing them in real life would be best:)

 

 

100’s Day Activities

On Tuesday, February 21st we celebrated the 100th day that we have been in school – not counting weekends and school holidays.  We did all sorts of fun activities including: making Fruit Loop necklaces with ten groups of different colours; headbands with crowns that they did 20 sets of five tally marks on, as well as counting by fives on coloured dots; 100’s day booklets; and our posters – shown here on the bulletin board.

After such a busy day we celebrated 101st day with a watching of the Disney classic cartoon – 101 Dalmatians.

Lunar New Year Celebrations

We had a very busy day celebrating the Lunar New Year.  We began our day by making Chinese dumplings. A huge thank you to Mrs. Schwarz and the moms who helped us do this fun activity.

We presented our poem – What Colour Were the Dragons? – with our Grade 2’s leading the choral recitation and the Grade 1’s doing the echo.  The Grade 1 students held the dragons that they made.  These are the ones used by the Grade 2’s from the poem.

Divisions 1 and 3 performed their version of the Dragon Dance.

For lunch we enjoyed a fantastic feast!!  Thank you to all who sent in food for our potluck.

Lunar New Year

We have been preparing for our school’s celebration on this upcoming Friday. Students have been practising a poem that they will perform (What Colour Were the Dragons?) and they have been writing their own poems about dragons.  They have made their own dragons (to be used as props for the Assembly) and made scales to add to the school dragon which will be encircling the corner of the Office in the hallway.  They created beautiful water-coloured lanterns which will be strung up in the gym for the Assembly.  Right now they are hanging in our classroom.

Please ensure that your child brings a bowl and spoon to school on Friday in order to partake in the potluck luncheon which has been become one of our yearly, and most yummy, traditions.

 

Gymnastics!!!

Students have been really enjoying our time with Coach Rachel, our gymnastic instructor, who has been with us for seven school days.  It was such a treat to watch the students overcome some fears and nervousness and to develop a good basic introduction to the gymnastic equipment.

Students were placed into teams and they then rotated through the four stations of equipment.  Our grade twos had another opportunity to show their developing leadership skills by leading their groups.

Here are some photos showing the equipment:

 

 

Learning Colour Schemes

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We have spent a few weeks learning about some of the different colour schemes.  The ones we worked with were:

  1. monochromatic (their original colour, plus the three ‘values’ of white, black, and grey)
  2. complementary (their original colour with its opposite, plus the three ‘values’)
  3. triadic (their original colour and the other two in their group – i.e. if they began with a primary colour then they used the three primary colours; if they began with a secondary colour then they used those three colours)
  4. analogous (their original colour and the other secondary and intermediate colours between their colour and the next colour that includes part of their complementary colour).  This last one was a bit tricky to figure out without the crayon colour wheel that we used as a reference.

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For this project students began with a large piece of white paper on which they drew a picture of their choice.  They needed to then trace their pencil lines with a fat marker in one of the ‘rainbow’ colours.  This colour choice became their ‘original’ colour for all the other sections.

I then cut these papers into four segments.  Each of these segments was completed in one of the above mentioned colour schemes.  When finished I taped each students’ four pieces together and mounted them onto a black background paper.

These are now hanging in the hallway outside of our classroom door on the two bulletin boards.  Please check them out next time you are in the school.  They look fabulous.

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