….. thanks to Jennifer Nicole Wells
For this week’s photo challenge Jennifer chose the word Horse. Last summer I photographed a number of horses in Italy. They were all in large public squares and were obviously working horses.
….this week’s WordPress photo challenge is satisfaction
One thing that I great satisfaction from is organizing my stuff. Right now I’m sitting in my cluttered bedroom, trying to figure out how to organize my art materials into a small space at the far end of the bedroom. One thing that I have done is sort through all my finished art projects and I’ve actually put them up on the walls. I had contemplated selling off everything very cheaply just to recoup the cost of the materials I used but there were too many pieces that I like too much. I’ve discovered that I’m getting a lot of satisfaction seeing my art on my walls.
…..Carla Sonheim gave us as assignment to go out and shoot 100 photos in the neighbourhood
I love this type of assignment. It gets me out walking and it makes me really look at a my surroundings. Once we took the photos we were to share our favourites. Here are 68 of mine.
…..one at the cottage and the other at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton
Last week when I went to the RBG with my daughter, Gaelan and my granddaughter, Winnie we were lucky enough to see some of the sculptures made with Lego. One of the creations was a very large hummingbird taking nectar from a very large lego flower.
This next hummingbird came by my feeder last weekend.
….a few more art projects done by my grade 3 classes
This last assignment on drawing faces has to be one of my favourite projects. If I ever get called back to do supply work in an art class I’ll definitely pull this one out of my bag of tricks if I have to come up with my own lesson plan.
…..the count down continues
One more day with the kids and then a PA day for cleaning up. The irony is that it seems like all I’ve been doing for two weeks is cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning; however, as soon as I start a new art project or pull books for discarding I seem to be right back where I started from.
Joanne suggested that I take photos of the every day things that I see all the time as a visual record of my life as a teacher. Here are a few shots taken after I’d cleaned the library. Unfortunately it doesn’t look that way at the moment. Outside the library a gallery of art that my students have done is on display and further down the hall is Ms. B’s class, Ms. C’s class and the office.
…..what to do with the kindergarten class for art in June?
I’m always pondering on what to teach to my art classes, especially the kindergarten classes. I get inspiration from numerous sources, i.e., books, on-line classes, Pinterest, other teachers and Facebook.
Recently, two artists that I follow on Facebook were posting great portraits that they had made from crayons, markers, pencil and collaged papers. They were intended to be fun and somewhat abstract. I really thought that my kindergarten class could handle a similar assignment. I quickly made up a sample and drew some basic shapes that I used to show them how to put together a face. Here is my sample:
As usual the kids ate it up and created some fantastic faces. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera to the class so I don’t have any photos to share of their work but I did repeat the lesson with my grade 3s. I added one extra element to their lesson and that was adding watercolour as one of the mediums that they could use.
Here are some of the finished pieces. I love them all.
Thank you Stefanie von Hoesslin and Jill Kuhn for inspiring me.
…..a few weeks ago The National Ballet Co. came to our school and demonstrated the fundamentals of ballet and the preparation that takes place before a show
Our entire school population, from kindergarten to grade 5, were lucky enough to see the show and ask questions of the dancers. As a follow-up I did an art lesson with my kindergarten classes and used a picture book about Degas and the little ballerina, Marie to demonstrate some ballet poses and highlight some of the work that Degas created.
I showed the classes how to draw a simple ballerina, using chalk pastels. Some of the boys asked if they could draw male dancers and I was interested to see how they would do that since I spent so much time showing them how to draw a tutu.
As always, I was blown away with their creations. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
…..thanks to Narami for hosting Tuesdays of Texture
Today’s video for Carla Sonheim’s on line class, 365- A Year Long Class, featured a photographer who photographs bricks in Chicago. I immediately went out after dinner and photographed the brick in my neighbourhood.
….when it rains it pours
This past week was the week I dreaded the most because many of the events that I organize and other special events and meetings that I take part in took place in this one week. On Monday the parents organized a very special luncheon for the staff at our school. The library was pretty much closed so that they could decorate, set up the tables and put out the food. As always there was so much food that the staff didn’t have to bring lunch for the next three days.
On Tuesday we had a soccer practice after school and then I drove to the warehouse to pick up an order of paper that I needed for my book making workshop on Thursday. When I got back to school I had dinner with the principle and then we waited together for the parent council meeting to begin at 7:00. I’m the teacher rep for these meetings. Needless to say by the time I got home it was pretty late.
On Wednesday we had another soccer practice after school so I started to set up for my workshop earlier in the day. I cut enough paper for about 60 books and I typed out the names of the 60 students who would be attending the special Forest of Reading Celebration. I placed the lists in the attendance folders so that teachers would know which students needed to be released from class. I would have stayed later and put more things out but I was reminded earlier in the day that I had bought a ticket to see a stage production that one of my former colleagues and dear friend was the stage manager for. I went home to have dinner with my husband and then left shortly after to get to the church on time for the musical extravaganza. It was actually very good.
On Thursday the day started with a bit of a wrinkle in our plans. The photographer for the grade 5 year end photo had to be rescheduled and it happened to fall on the same morning as the Forest of Reading Celebration. Four of the six teachers that were running the workshops that morning also had to be in the photo. Luckily my right hand woman, MC, was able to call down the grade 3s and 4s and read to them for a few minutes and then got them started on the art activity of bookmaking.
After the photo was taken the grade 5s went to the gym where two of my friends and colleagues hosted a drama/dance workshop based on one of the books from the Forest of Reading that I had read to the entire school. The book was The Artist and Me. I wrote about it in an earlier post. I went straight to the library to help MC with the bookmaking. This year I chose three easy designs and the first group mostly chose to make the accordion book.
At lunch the participants in the activity day went to the gym where they were served pizza, juice and ice-cream bars. All the teacher expert readers were invited as well. After the food was devoured the children went outside for lunch recess and the teachers had a bit of a break.
In the afternoon our visiting author, Sue Irwin, arrived with her props and extra copies of her book Safety Stars. She talked about her love of hockey and how she came to write a children’s book about how hockey evolved over the years with new safety equipment. She also tried to talk about the process of writing but the children had questions mostly about hockey which she happily answered. 
At the end of the day I handed out special awards to the students who had read the most books. The goal was 12 but the top students had read 30, 39 and 41. Every student who attended the celebration also received a gift bag with a pencil, pen, book mark and stickers and one book of their choice.
After school I had one more soccer practice with the girls before their tournament the following day. On the way home I took the car through the car wash.
On Friday the girls’ soccer tournament took place. There were only three schools participating on this day. Our team won their first game 7-0 and lost the second game 4-0. It was a really chilly day but I’d rather have that than a day sweltering with heat. We’re not sure if we’re moving on. If we are it means more practices. I guess we’ll find out on Tuesday. On the way home tonight I went back to the car wash and complained about the dirty water that they used to rinse the car. I didn’t notice the spots all over the car until the next morning. They gave me another voucher for a car wash so I decided to use it right away.
Ah, finally the weekend but there is no rest for the wicked. On Saturday I did three loads of laundry, cleared more things from the basement, started to take out my summer wardrobe and put away more winter items. I cleaned bathrooms, tidied my father’s apartment and vacuumed and de-cluttered the living room. We drove to the mall to get some new keys cut and buy some light bulbs and batteries. I checked out Winners while we were there but it was late in the day so I didn’t have time to try anything on.
Today is grey, cool and it’s pouring down rain at the moment. We went out earlier and picked up some meat from the boys that my husband coaches. It was some kind of fundraiser for one of the many activities that they’re involved in. We spent a couple of hours relaxing over coffee and just talking. Now that we’re back home we’re resting up a bit before we head out again to do more errands, i.e., grocery shopping, garden shopping and checking out fences for our backyard.
Tomorrow is a holiday in Canada, Victoria Day. Traditionally it’s the weekend where a lot of people head up north to open the cottage. I was hoping to do the same but I knew if it was cold and raining I wouldn’t be making the trip this weekend. Only once did I go up in May when the conditions weren’t optimal and I vowed I’d never do it again. My daughter and I froze and left early. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. Perhaps we’ll visit a friend or drive to Hamilton or continue cleaning up around here and maybe we’ll start putting in our garden.
Cheers!
