Student Led Artwork

I am sure you all saw these wonderful self portraits last night at the Student-Led conferences.  They form a very appealing wall of creativity in our classroom.

Through a directed drawing lesson students learned the proper positioning of facial features.  It is a common tendency for young children to place the eyes way too high on the face.  In actual fact they are centred in the middle of the face – from top to bottom.  Eyes are not seen as round objects but are more almond-shaped.  For proper positioning and sizing 5 eyes would fit from end to end across the face – of course, we only have the two!!  The eyes should be in positions 2 and 4 (if we measured out 5 eye spaces).  The tops of the ears are at the same height as the eyes and the bottoms of the ears line up with the mouth.

To become more accurate at the proportions in their drawing takes a great deal of time and practise.  We will be working more on these drawing lessons in the next few weeks.

“A Starry Night” in the Style of Vincent Van Gogh

Students have been learning about Vincent Van Gogh.  We read about his life and have been exploring some of his more famous paintings.  With his ‘A Starry Night’ we created our own versions using oil pastels as a basis and finishing it off with a watered down blue tempra wash.

Students learned an important lesson that they need to ensure that they use a solid base of the oil pastels – especially with the light colours (white and yellow) – before doing the wash.  While the white is not seen on the white paper beforehand, it is extremely important that it is present to repel the paint and become visible afterwards.

When we saw the dried results we needed to go back and add in these vital details with more oil pastels.  I think the results are quite striking.

Arts Alive Grand Opening Tomorrow

Please read the following information which was forwarded to me from the Burnaby Art Gallery about the Grand Opening of the art display tomorrow evening.  I hope you all have a chance to get by to check out the display.

 

Well the exhibits are up and looking fabulous!

A reminder the opening reception is Thursday April 18, 5-7pm at the Burnaby Art Gallery. All are welcome!

You can see the virtual exhibit on our website: http://www.burnaby.ca/Things-To-Do/Arts-and-Heritage/Burnaby-Art-Gallery/Exhibitions/Arts-Alive-and-Focus-on-the-Collection–Wood-Engraving.html

Click each school name to see a slide show of the work created by kids at that school.

Or flip through all of the work directly from our flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24559982@N05/collections/72157633042135547/

 

 

Student Led Conferences

It was so nice to see all the parents in the class sharing in their children’s learning tonight!!  I always really enjoy sitting back and watching the family interactions.  I was very impressed with how well the children were able to lead their families through the process of sharing their ‘menu of events’.

Thank you to all parents for making these Student-Led conferences such a great learning experience for the children.

 

“Handy” Easter Lilies

Students enjoyed making these lovely Easter Lilies by tracing their own hands and curving them into the lily petals.  These were mounted onto colourful egg-shaped backings.  Final touches were added by making a grass base, stems, and leaves out of green contruction paper – as well as making yellow stamens by twisting yellow tissue paper and gluing them into the petals.

Enjoy the long weekend!  It is supposed to be sunny and warm.

Happy Easter!!  Watch out for bunnies:)

Welcome back!

I hope you all had a great Spring Break!!  From the stories I have heard from the children it sounds like everyone enjoyed the time off.  As of last night, the Burnaby School Board has approved a 2 week Spring Break for our District for next year!!  We will now have the time that most of the other districts around the province have been enjoying these past few years.

Beginning next week there will be a few changes in our classroom.  We will be having a new student arrive – probably on Tuesday.  The students are all very excited about this new addition to our class.

We will also be having a slight change in our daily schedule.  Mrs. Cobo will still be teaching in our room on Tuesdays between Recess and Lunchtime.  On the other days in the week, Mrs. Gojevic will be teaching in the class at this same time.  This will allow Mrs. Cobo to have more of her Resource time available for our (several) new Level 1 ESL students who have arrived in the last month.  Mrs. Gojevic will be doing Calendar and teaching Math with the class.  As you all know, this time block is when I am out of the room teaching the Reading Recovery programme to individual students.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!

The students experimented with oil pastels and created these lovely 3 layered shamrocks out of green construction paper.  They were only permitted to use the different hues of green and blue oil pastels.

They make a lovely display on our hallway bulletin board!  Enjoy the Spring Break week off.  As I am writing this it is sunny and I am about to take Nikita out for her afternoon walk.  See you all in a week.

Primary Days of Music

Today we walked to Gilmore Community School to take part in the annual Primary Days of Music festival.  We joined our hosts, Gilmore, and four other elementary schools – Buckingham, Lyndhurst, Parkcrest, and Capitol Hill – in singing many songs ‘en masse’.  Each school also sang two songs on their own.

Our group behaved (fairly) well.  I thought their two songs were quite lovely and they seemed to enjoy singing with so many other children all at once.  All in all, it was a great experience for all – especially the grade ones who are not included in this festival in most schools.  This is traditionally a festival for only grade two and three students.  Being a small school does have its benefits.