The Japanese Footbridge, in the Style of Claude Monet

We used oil pastels and recreated an important piece of Monet’s famous garden in Giverny … his Japanese Footbridge.  We looked at prints of a variety of his paintings of the bridge (which were painted at different times of the day) to notice the different lighting. We also looked at several of his water lily paintings.

Claude Monet was a leading member in the Impressionism painting movement which developed in France in the late 19th century and which was based on the practise of painting out of doors spontaneously – en plein air 🎨

We then used either green or blue tempera disc paints to do a wash over the whole picture. These lovely art pieces are gracing the bulletin board in the hallway outside of our classroom.



















More Plant Experiments …

This afternoon we did preparations on a lot of different experiments …

We did pairs of plants in pots which we will be treating differently …

One will get water, one will not …

One will get sunlight, one will not …


One has roots, one had its roots removed …


One has leaves, one had its leaves removed …

We ‘planted’ some avocado pits (seeds) …

We put seeds in three containers, one each with soil, sand, and clay … we will await the outcome. (picture to come)

These are the plants we used …

We are still awaiting our beans-in-bags to sprout.  We are thinking it hasn’t been warm enough, or sunny enough, on our windows … we are still hopeful 🤞🏻🤞🏻

Exploring Plants

We have begun our exploration of all things plants. Students planted seeds into little pots – they had a choice of four different seed types: Cosmos, Forget-Me-Knots, Zinnias, and Asters.

We put soaked overnight Lima beans into Ziplock bags with paper towels and taped them to our classroom windows.  We hope to see growth soon.  A few are looking promising, as of this afternoon.

We did an experiment with white flowers and celery placed into jars of water. One was the ‘control’ – meaning that it was just in clear water. Two other jars had food colouring (one blue and one red) with celery and white flowers in them.  Another set had one large bunch of flowers with one stalk that was divided into two jars, one with red and one with blue food colouring.


Students noticed that the food colouring had moved up the stems into the leaves and the flowers.

We also planted peas into a large pot.  Most were planted on the right-hand side of the pot straight out of the package.  On the left we soaked the peas overnight.  Our objective is to see which side grows first / fastest.


We will be continuing with our explorations tomorrow … stay tuned …

Arts Alive – “Out of this World” – what excites us …

For this biennial event, from the Burnaby Art Gallery, we started by reading a storybook called, “Dream You’ll Be”, by Joseph T. Garcia.  We had a few discussions on things that we like and those that excite us – maybe exciting enough to pursue as a career.

Students then did a ‘draft’ drawing of their ‘exciting thing’ before making their ‘good’ copy.  The grade two girls prepared the canvas (the required size by the BAG of 18”x24”) with paint.  They were given black, blue, purple, and white.  This was their result …




After all the students completed their final planet Saturns (what excites them), the grade two boys glued them onto the canvas.

Now it looks like this …

I will deliver it to the Burnaby Art Gallery next week.  They prepare all the art pieces, from the classes at schools who choose to participate, for proper display. We will all be invited to the Grand Opening Night.  I will let you know when it is.  It is usually in April.

I will share the students’ “artist statements” via an email.  They were very thoughtful in what they chose and how they said it.