Pysanky Egg Art
Have you ever seen those beautiful Pysanky eggs? I have always thought they were so artfully created. When my father was in the Ukraine many years ago, he brought me one back and so began my little collection that you see here. I started to make a few and as I was doing them, I began to think how could I do something like this with children?
So, we made these 3D decorations. The children colour planned and persevered to create such wonderful Pysanky eggs using paper, small coloured markers, fancy scissors and small bits of sponge to separate the layers. Here is our bulletin board before I took it down today and sent them home for you!
Thank you to everyone who came to listen to our choir performance and view our artwork. When we set the art up a few days before, it was lovely to see all the students admiring each other's work. Many of the older students came up to me and complimented our 'Grade Two' artwork. It was a positive experience all around.
Story Mountains
Some of you may remember a post I did last year on how to identify or de-construct a basic story. Here is a link to that post: http://msfinksclass.blogspot.ca/2013_04_01_archive.html
Using familiar stories with predictable story patterns we plot the events on our story mountain and discuss all the elements of a basic narrative story. By this time in the year, students have heard many types of different text (fiction, non-fiction, info-fiction). Info-fiction is a story with both real and fake elements. An example that comes to mind is 'The Magic School Bus' series which has some great science facts but they are embedded with a fictional narrative (Ms Frizzle and her magic bus). As we look at the stories and discuss the 'beginning, middle and end' of the stories studied, we also begin to identify key elements that we will need to add to our own written work. Using the 'Little Miss' or 'Mr Men' books by Roger Hargreaves, which has a very predictable pattern, we will first draft a story outline before we begin to write our own stories. I am looking forward to reading some of our first Mr Men/Little Miss inspired published stories. We have titles like; 'Mr Slapshot', 'Miss Bad Luck', 'Mr Floppyfeet' and 'Little Miss Gymnast' just to name a few. Let the story writing begin!
Spring
I took this picture on Tuesday of this week when we had that surprise snowstorm. I had put up spring flowers on our windows and you can see them against the sky with all the snow. A bit of a paradox! Hopefully this is it and sunny skies are ahead :)
Butterfly larvae arrive May 14th! I know students who were with me in grade one last year have done this but I think it is a learning experience that can be repeated. It will be nice to have experts in the class :)
No comments:
Post a Comment