SmArts 2014-15 Part 2

In our second term, the focus of our SmArts classes was painting with water colours and acrylics. 

Intermediate Class

Northern Lights

The Northern Lights are always fascinating for all ages.  The 

dropped dynamic colors onto wet paper and let it soar down the page, blending and moving like real Northern Lights. The movement of color created their art.

Butterflies

The Butterflies were a lesson in mirrored imaging, beauty and selecting colors that work well.    It is a lesson of detail, balance and fosters awareness and appreciation of the value of insects. We used 6" x 8" mounted canvases from Dollarama for this project.  As soon as the paint was dried, the paintings were ready to display.

 

 Primary Class

Metallic Owls

Our Metallic Owls introduced the students to Folk Art.  The owl is created by applying a raised glue surface, and the lesson teaches the importance of detail and shape. Each student chose either copper, gold or bronze metallic paint and when applied, it gave their image the appearance of hammered metal.  Similar to the butterflies above, the owls were painted on mounted canvases from Dollarama for this project. 

Children in the Rain

The "Children in the Rain" were easily relatable and appealing for young students.   How fun to paint the umbrellas and raincoats.  The last addition to our painting was rain.  Each student determined which direction their rain was coming from and learned to apply it very consistently, maintaining believable rainfall.

Thanks to our art instructor, Carol Barbeau for providing the descriptions of these projects.

School Year Timeline

Our Local Community

My first social studies unit of the year was "Our Local Community" from the grade 2 curriculum.  During this unit, students learn about timelines.  They first create their own, then move on to working on a community timeline.  As part of this process, when my friend Kathy and I planned this unit, we decided to also have our students create a school year timeline. Our idea for this was inspired by this Pinterest site: Class Timeline.  Of course this is an on-going year-long project.  So of often when  a unit is over, we tend to start the next one without thinking much about the previous one.  Therefore it took some discipline for me to continue with our school year timeline.  

We decided to do  two pages for each month and use 12" x 12" scrapbooking pages for them, so that at the end of the year we would actually have a timeline scrapbook of our school year. At the end of September my students and I discussed different events of the first month of the year.  I then went through my pictures and ordered what we would need.  It took several days for me to get them back.  Finally we proceeded to create our two pages of September. and posted them on our timeline bulletin board.

Pic Collage

By then I was already wondering about keeping this up month my month for the entire school year. Kathy and I chatted on the phone and she remembered an iPad App Kathy Waldner and introduced to us at ICHE 2014 - Pic Collage.  What a fabulous idea!! Thanks Kathy (both of you)!
With this free App, you can create collages easily and quickly.  You can choose from various layouts, backgrounds and shapes.  You can add photos, videos, text and stickers.  All in all, it's a splendid tool to use for our class timeline project.  It takes us about 20-30 minutes to select our photos and create our pages each month.  Since my class consists mostly of first graders we work on this as a group.  I understand the Kathy (or probably both of them have their 2nd and 3rd graders do use this App independently one they've been introduced to it. 

September 2014  to June 2015

Now that we're into summer holidays, our 2014 - 2015 School Timeline has also been completed.  After adding our June events and admiring the completed bulletin board, we compiled the entire project into a scrapbook which we keep in our school library. 

Scrapbook

 My students and I felt a sense of closure as we added the last page: a Wordle describing the events, projects and activities of  our school-year.  This project proved to be a great way to teach timelines and document our school year.  We may not create one every year, but I'll certainly keep it in mind for the years that I teach grade one social studies.

 Yearbook

The other day I chatted with my friend Ruth and she gave me another idea, "Typically our yearbook has mainly events and activities that took place at the end of the year, you could add your entire timeline and you'd have something from the September through to June."  What a great notion! If not in our yearbook, as we don't publish on each year, then we will certainly consider adding it to our Term 3 Brennan Bulletin.  Thanks Ruth!

SmArts 2014-15 Part 1

When I first started teaching here at Brennan School, a grant became available in our area to incorpoarate the arts into the rest of the curricula.  Funded by the JW McConnell Foundation, ArtsSmarts afforded schools and teachers to hire local artists, purchase art supplies and offer programming that otherwise might not be possible.
Modeled after this same program, Portage la Prairie School Division currently offers a similar program: SmArts.  This year, here at Brennan School, we've hired Ms. Carol Barbeau to teach three blocks of art classes, one per term.

Colour Mixing

Term 1 consisted of colours and collage.  In the first class students learned about mixing colours by creating either bubbles or balloons.  Primary coloured circles were strategically drawn on water colour paper using water colour pencils, some of the circles over lapped to create the secondary colours.

 Collage

Next, the students created a collage out of cardstock and construction paper.  Tracing, cutting and colour selection were a large part of this project.  As a finishing touch, students enjoyed decorating their bowl or vase with metallic stickers.

 

 

 

 

Water Colour Farm Scenes

Thirdly, the younger students created a country scene of grazing sheep complete actual wool.  The older students painted a similar scene with a barn. 







Second and Third Terms' projects will be posted as the terms' art projects are completed.

Science and Songs, Stories and Snacks

Some students just seem to have a way of motivating their teachers!
I've always enjoyed teaching social studies more than science; however, after a recent comment made by one of my students, I might just find science sliding closer to social studies in my favourite subjects category.
Last Tuesday afternoon, one of our first graders excitedly burst into the school.  The first person she ran into was Karen, our high school teacher.  "Today is my best day ever!" the student exclaimed.  "In science class we grew marbles.  We're going to have music class with Mrs. Steppan.  Later Dora Basl (Fairholme) is coming to tell us stories, and ... my mom is making Jello for snack!"  Listing each special event off on her fingers.  "This is just too much!" she concluded happily.

Matter: Solids, Liquids & Gases

How can science remain a hum-drum subject after hearing the above exultation?  The "marbles" we grew, were actually gel crystals typically used in floral arrangements for weddings or other special events.  They start off about the size of BB pellets and grow to the size of marbles when soaked in water over night.


The morning after soaking them, the organizer in me hoped my students wouldn't remember our crystals experiments until science class that day, but no such luck!  As soon as they entered my classroom to leave their agenda books on my desk, one eager youngster spotted the rose bowl I'd tucked on the counter (hopefully out of their sight) at the back of my classroom.

"Look at these marbles!" he exclaimed.  All my first and second grade students as well as a few from the older class crowded around too ooh and ah over this phenomenal event. So it was that we started science class at 8:00 AM, rather than our usual 10:00 period.








 I have to concur that the best science classes aren't scheduled or planned, they're all about making discoveries no matter what time of day or class period.

Wool Felting at SAGE

For the SAGE conference in 2014, my friend Kathy suggested we attend a session on wool felting.  I had never heard of this concept before, so I wasn't quite sure about it at first.  Kathy suggested checking it out on Pinterest. Did I ever find a lot on this topic!!
We attended, we learned, we experimented, we enjoyed!
I won't go into a lot of detail on describing the techniques as they can be found on Pinterest.

Wet Felting

Heart

For the first half of the day we concentrated on wet felting.  Each of us created a piece of felt measuring about 9" x 12".  Our instructor showed us various projects that she had created.  I liked her stem of fall leaves and thus decided to create my piece in fall colours.  Finally, several months after the fact, I've finally created my own stem of fall leaves.
Some attendees had specific pictures in mind: hearts,... flowers,... you name it.

      

Flowers

My Goose

 

 

 Needle Felting

In the afternoon, we learned how to needle felt.  Most of us worked on animal, while one lady made a flower.

 

Poppy

Kathy's Bird.

 

 

Felting Supplies

 After shopping around for felting tools and materials I discovered that they can be purchased at Homewood Colony's Sewing Store. If interested in ordering from them, you can contact Mary at: maryitis@gmail.com

Natural Resources and Animal Needs

Well, report cards are done; the Christmas concert has been performed and we're in the midst of Christmas holidays now, so here's my next blog post going back a month or two with the content...

Natural Resources

As part of my unit on Our Local Community we also did some work on our natural resources.  As an introduction to this topic, we watched the following video: Natural Resources.  My friend Kathy Stahl and I found a neat  idea  "Eric Carle" book idea for this specific project in this Landforms book.    A different colour of construction paper was selected for each of the natural resources: yellow - sun, light blue - air, grey - animals, green - plants, brown, minerals, black soil and dark blue - water.  We simply changed the topic to natural resources.  Since I have a younger group of students (mostly grade 1) I created  a cloze captions for each of the natural resources.  The students filled in however we use each natural resource and illustrated them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Needs of Living Things

 To connect our science unit of Growth and Changes in Animals to Our Local Community, the students each selected  either a wild of domestic animal from our area and created a flip book describing how it meets its needs. The idea came from this link on Basic Needs.  A song is used to introduce the topic. 

Plaster Leaves and Fall Fans

Plaster Leaves

For some art classes it works best to work on two projects simultaneously.  I began by getting the students started on leaf rubbings.  Then I took groups of 3 or 4 students and had them do plaster leaves which I found on "That Artist Woman's" blog you can find her detailed instructions at Plaster Leaf Prints.

Once the first group had theirs done, they went back to their leaf rubbings and the next group came to do their plaster leaves.  That Artist Woman explains, it's best to apply a coat of Mod Podge to the plaster before painting the leaves to prevent the acrylic paint from being totally absorbed by the plaster.

 

Fall Fans

During the second class, we first painted the plaster leaf imprints with acrylic paints.  As they dried, we switched to our leaf rubbings.  They started by drawing lines about 2 centimeters apart (we have rulers that are about that width) across the back of their leaf rubbing sheets.  The score lines helped make even accordion folds. Finally we folded our leaf rubbings into some fine fall fans!