Last week the Alberta Opera came to our school and preformed the play Pinocchio! It was very different from the Disney movie, but it was still good. I was surprised that the used a girl for Pinocchio. You know how in the movie Pinocchio has a long nose if he lies well they used balloons to show that. The cop and judge were my favorite because were so funny. The play was mostly singing of course because Opera is all about singing.
I hope they come next year and do another play. I LOVED IT!
Next Tuesday, April 3rd is Clay Day! We will be lucky enough to have Mrs. Johnson visit our classroom to help us create individual clay projects. We are tying our clay projects into our Social learning and the grade 4′s will be creating tipis and the Grade 5′ will be making masks.
Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Wierenga visited our class the day before spring break to introduce us to some of the clay techniques and terminology that we will need to know before we begin making our projects. They also showed us several examples of aboriginal tipis and masks that the students could use as inspiration for their art. Mrs Wandio has also completed several lessons with the students on aboriginal tipis and masks and the colours and symbols that are traditionally used in this art work.
Now all that is left to do is create! We have set our clay date for April 3rd from 1:20 – 3:00 and we would love to have some parent volunteers to come help. If your are able to volunteer, please feel free to send us an e-mail, write a comment on this post, or return the note that was sent home last week. Thank you for your support and we look forward to displaying our clay creations.
This week in Art we learned about the Artist Paul Klee. We first researched Paul Klee and some of his art techniques and then completed a valentines day project inspired by this artist. I wanted to share some of the students findings as well as the final projects and hope you enjoy viewing the art as much as we enjoyed creating it.
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in 1879.
He was born in Muchenbuchsee, Switzerland in 1879.
Paul got into drawing at about 3 or 4 years old
Paul really liked music and sketching on paper and in notebooks
Paul took a interest in music and drawing at a young age
at 7 he played violin
his dad was a music teacher
In 1898, with Paul’s parents permission he began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich
In 1905 Klee was developing experimental art techniques, including Cubism and expressionism art
1906 married German pianist Lily Stumpf.
Paul Klee was part of a group called the “THE BLUE RIDER GROUP”
Expressionism Art
was developed in 9th and 10th centuries
uses vivid colors.
is painted with a lot of emotions.
express what the artists are feeling.
contain intense emotional expressions
Cubism Art
Inspired by African and native American art.
was the first abstract art style
is not supposed to look real
uses geometric shapes to show what the artist is painting.
cubism is a modern art made up mostly of paintings.
Some Cubist’s are Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso
Parkland School Division has launched a new blog this year called 184 Days of Learning. This blog shares the views of Students, teachers, administrators and parents as they answer the question… What did you learn today?
I am very proud to report that we have our first post from a student in our class! Please check it out and maybe even post a comment.
If anyone else in interested in contributing to this blog, please feel free to sign up here or let us know and we can help you make the connections. We know we have lots of amazing learning happening both inside and outside of the classroom and we look forward to sharing that with the world.
As we head into the new year, we would like to thank parents again for their continued support. We appreciate all of you checking our blog for regular updates and thought we would post this video to help make this process a bit more efficient for you. Here is a quick video explaining how to sign up for a reader. This tool will allow you to check one place for updates on any blogs that you follow, including ours. If you have children in more than one class in our school you can simply go to your reader and it will tell you when there is updates instead of you going to each site individually. Way more time effective!
We appreciate that your time with your children is precious and hope that this tool helps.
Below you will see some pictures of the good work that is going on in our classroom during Language Arts. We try and get to our Guided Reading and Literacy Centers once or twice a week. This is a great opportunity for students to meet in small groups with me (Mrs. Wandio) to work on their literacy skills. The other students are working at a variety of literacy centers to practice literacy skills independently. Miss Mahan captured one of the groups working at the Reader’s Theatre Center and recorded some of the great work they were doing. Click on the link under the pictures and wait a moment while it loads. Thanks Miss Mahan!
Just a note! Please visit your students’ blog site to see some reflective writing they are doing for Language Arts!
The votes are in and the majority of the students decided that we will be watching a movie for our Christmas Party on December the 23rd. The second most popular choice was having free time. Therefore, any extra time we have when the movie is complete will be open for the students to complete whatever school appropriate activities they wish.
The two most popular suggestions for movies were “elf” and “the grinch”. As these movies are PG I will be sending a permission form home on Monday.
The class also decided that they would like snacks for the party. We decided that we would like both healthy and unhealthy snacks. There will be a place on the form for families to fill out what snacks, if any, your student is able to contribiute to the party. You can also make post a comment on our post with your contribution if that works better for your family.
The kids are excited and looking forward to a fun afternoon.
Thank you for your support
As we all know, Christmas holidays are only a few weeks away (only 10 school days to the Grade 4′s calculation on Friday). Please have a look at our class calendar for some of the events we have on the go in the next few weeks. With this exciting time of year also comes the class Christmas party. This year we will be holding our party on the last day before Christmas holidays which will be December 23.
Today in class, we set criteria for a great Christmas party. We came up with:
1. It needs to be about Christmas.
2. We will have food with some healthy choices.
3. It needs to be something in which everyone can participate.
4. The majority of the class needs to agree on the idea.
So now we would like to hear some ideas from everyone. We will be making our decision on Thursday.
As many of you have heard, Forest Green student leadership group is putting on Christmas door decorating challenge this year. As this is a whole class project, I thought we should gather ideas from everyone and decide on our design together as a classroom community. Please post your idea as a comment to this post. We will then discuss the ideas on Monday during Art class. Remember that a convincing argument should tell us how your idea meets the criteria for the door decorating challenge which are:
All students need to have a part in the decorating.
It needs to be unique, colorful and have a Christmas theme.
The entire outside of the door should be covered.
Must be school appropriate.
I look forward to hearing your ideas and discussing our door decoration as a class.
Today in Science Class The Grade 5′s talked about the importance of Electricity. We discussed different situations where Electricity can be dangerous and all agreed on to follow the following rules:
We will make sure that we are always supervised when dealing with electricity.
We will make sure our desk are dry and our water bottles are on the ground before we work with electricity. We know electricity and water do not mix.
We will not use the electrical outlets as part of our electricity experiments. We know they are too powerful to be a part of our electric circuits.
We will make sure that we all follow the directions for the activities and respect the materials we are working with.
We all promised to do our best to keep our bodies out of the electric circuits.
We promise to look out for the safety of others through out this electricity unit.
Each of the students wrote these rules out in their own words on their blog as a vow of safety. Each student also wrote a paragraph about why following these rules is important to them. We are all looking forward to the exciting Science unit ahead.
As most Grade 5 parents know we had our first set of immunizations on Friday afternoon. They were all very strong and we were extremely proud of each and every one of them.
There are 2 more dates in the series of immunizations for the students this year. These will take place on:
January 13th, 2012 and
May 4th 2012
As this was our first set of immunizations, we wrote the date in their agenda and we discussed it as a class. Due to the fact that the immunizations cause lots of anxiety and emotional reactions for several of our students, we will not be writing it in their agendas the next two occasions. We ask that you record it on your calendars at home and help prepare your child in any way you deem necessary. Thank you for your support, and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
