Weekly Activities

This week, the children worked on a project together. The project was to create dioramas that depicted scenarios from the book "One of Each" by Mary Ann Hoberman.  In this story, Oliver Tolliver lives alone and is quite content having only one of each until he invites a friend over. His friend, Peggoty Small doesn't agree with his one of each home. Oliver comes to realize that he enjoys the company of friends and goes to find a pair for everything in his house. Even after having two of everything, his greatest joy was sharing a plate of food with his friends. Painting the dioramas The "one of each" and "two of each" cupboards Proud of his work Making puppets This group effort had the children compromise and problem solve as they made the decisions as to who did what job and what scenes they would create. Once the dioramas were complete, the children made puppets so they could re-enact the story with each other. The finished proje...

Mr. Gumpy's Outing by John Burningham Making origami boats Mr. Gumpy goes for a boat ride and along the way a number of animals ask if they can join him. He allows them but he has rules to his generosity. If the rabbit joins, he cannot hop.  If the cat comes aboard, he cannot chase the rabbit and on it goes. Mr. Gumpy has a condition for each animal.  The trip goes smoothly until one at a time each animal breaks his/her rule and they all capsize.  Still being generous, Mr. Gumpy asks the animals back to his house to share a meal.     I wondered aloud if Mr. Gumpy was too generous and that is why they fell into the water. Sofia said, "No, you can't be too generous because that is what it is all about." William thought that maybe only 4 animal should be on the boat then they wouldn't tip. Tyreese agreed that not all of the animals should go at once. Coming onto the boat Testing the boats Sofia's comment had us thinking: if Mr. Gumpy...

All of the children agree that sharing is being generous so we explored this idea further today. We read  Jan Brett's story of the Ukrainian folktale   The Mitten . Nikolai asks his Grandma to knit him a mitten. When Nikolai is out in the snow, he drops his mitten.  A mole finds the mitten and crawls inside. The story goes on with other animals crawling into the mitten to stay warm. In the end, the bear sneezes sending the mitten into the air and Nikolai catches it. The mole was the first to crawl into the mitten.  The children thought he was generous to let the next animal crawl in.  As the mitten became crowded Bela noticed how all of the animals still let in others to share the space.  This led to us talking about sharing spaces at Creative Minds. We used this story to practice our math skills keeping track of the number and order of the animals as they crawled into the mitten. Using their fine motor skills, each child sewed a mitten. ...

For our summative project, each child received a canvas and was asked to identify something in nature they would like to paint. The children had to identify the colours needed for their painting. Using only the primary colours as well as black and white, the children created their colours. William: This is the ocean.  A squid is trying to attack a crocodile.  Tyreese: This is a forest. There are trees and flowers. Ryleigh: This is underwater at the beach. The sand is black from the water. There is a fish, a starfish and seaweed. Chloe: This pony is at the playground. He will go to the forest after. Michael: This is tree in the forest. Bela: This is rain falling on trees in the forest. Sofia: This is a castle in the forest. The castle is made out of nature stuff. Keira: This is a beach.  There is sand, rocks, logs and water. The sky is red.

"You look big!" Carefully flattening his clay. Examining a flower.    This week we looked at the work of Georgia O'Keefe. We  learned that O'Keefe was inspired by nature and expressed herself through paintings of landscapes and flowers. We watched a short video of Georgia O'Keefe on Brain Pop Jr.  http://www.brainpopjr.com. The video explained that O'Keefe loved to paint things from a different perspective. Many of her paintings of flowers are close up often resulting in the painting looking abstract.  We looked at some of O'Keefe's paintings of flowers to understand her perspective and what she saw.  The children then used magnifying glasses to examine real flowers at close range to see if they could discover new things that they couldn't see before.  Some of the children noted that some flowers had more than one colour and they could see where the colour changed when using the magnifying glass. On Wednesday, the chi...

Looking at Eric Carle's books This week we looked at the art work of author and illustrator Eric Carle. We watched a short slide show of how Eric Carle paints tissue paper and how he uses those papers to create his images. Here is a link to his website http://www.eric-carle.com/photogallery.html The children  looked at a number of his books to see his painting techniques and how he  uses his designs to create images.  The children then experimented rolling layers of paint onto paper. After the layers of paint were on the paper, the children used different edged paint scrapers to create designs. On Friday, the children used stencils to trace onto their painted paper and then used these images to create their own stories becoming both author and illustrator. The butterfly flew away from her mother because she didn't have her popsicle. By Keira My teddy bear. By Billy The whale wants to get the Turtle family. They lost their baby in the ocean....

Today each child made a book to express their knowledge about colours in nature. This assessment helps us to see what each child is understanding and learning. Some of the comments were: Ryleigh: Red and blue make purple. Keira: The sky is blue. William: Red is a primary colour. Tyreese: Cucumbers are green. Chloe: I love purple. Sofia: Purple is a secondary colour.