Category Archives: Teaching

I Don’t Know How I Managed!

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….getting ready for an overseas trip following the last week of school was insane

As I’ve mentioned many times before teaching in June is insanely busy. The week before leaving for Italy I had the following to do:

• attend a birthday party for a very special friend

I’ve know AB for 40 years. In fact she was my first teaching friend and colleague and she quickly became a member of our family. She was there when all my children were born, she spends every Christmas with us and most birthdays. She attended the weddings of our daughters and held Winnie soon after she was born. We’ve been there for each other, through thick and thin, in good times and bad. Last year she made a big move and the family rallied behind her to help in any way possible. I was thrilled when all my family came out for her birthday, especially since we were all preparing for Italy.

• MC the farewell celebration for the grade 5 students on Monday

• clean the library and attend the staff party on Tuesday

• on Wednesday run the final assembly of the year, with the help of two friends, for the entire school.

• on Thursday attend the last staff meeting of the year and then clean up the library office before the end of the school day

Trying to clean and organize my office was probably the most stressful day of all. Knowing that I only had a few hours to get it done and having to say good-bye to two colleagues who were retiring left me very emotional. At one point I actually had a melt down when friends wished me a great trip and gave me Euros to treat myself in Italy. I think it was all too much. I had put such high expectations on the trip and my husband wasn’t 100% well. I really worried that things would go wrong and that the trip could be one big disaster (luckily it wasn’t).

• Friday became packing day and transporting the birds to my niece’s place

Friday, July 1st was the first day of my holiday and it was Canada Day. That meant that next to nothing was open because it was a national holiday. If anything went wrong today there wasn’t much I could do about it. Well of course something did go wrong. The shoes that I had planned to take to Italy broke and were unwearable. I couldn’t get them fixed in time and I had no other sandals to replace them.

We also got a phone call from a very close friend who was suppose to be on his way to Norway for a very special presentation that he was doing. Well it turned out that when he got to the airport his passport, although not expired, was going to expire in a couple of months and the airlines wouldn’t let him fly. Would we verify to officials that he was who he claimed to be so that he could have a new passport issued to him? Well of course we said yes but we weren’t sure how he would manage that seeing that all government offices were closed.

• Saturday we packed the car and drove to Hamilton to drop off the dog and pick up our daughter and granddaughter and then drove to the airport

I decided to quickly drive to the mall as soon as they open and pick up a new pair of sandals. I was successful and in fact I ended up buying two pairs of shoes that I packed for the trip.

Our friend called and had made arrangements to meet with someone from Immigration Canada and we had to be on call to answer any questions that they might have about him. I quickly asked about his height and weight and the colour of his eyes. Even though we’ve known him for over 25 years we weren’t sure about his eye colour. His hair is dark so we assumed they were probably brown but we were wrong. His eyes are blue.

By the time we left for Hamilton we still hadn’t heard from the immigration people and of course they tried to call us while we were driving. Luckily they tried several times and we did eventually connect and were able to answer all their questions to their satisfaction.

Later that day we all made our flights and our journey to Italy began. Maybe next time I plan a trip to Europe I’ll give myself a week at home before I leave. Stay tuned for our adventures in Venice. Ciao!

 

 

Art Heist – Copying From the Masters

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….what are grade 1s, 2s, and 3s capable of?

Back in April my friend, colleague and our school’s music teacher asked me if my students could paint large copies of some famous Canadian paintings that could be used to decorate the back of the stage for our outdoor concert in June. At first I was a little hesitant and reminded her that my students were only 6 to 8 years old. I thought about it for awhile, found a book in the library of Canadian art and then asked my students which paintings they would like to copy. I tried to steer them towards art that had large shapes and simple lines.

My grade two class loved Lawren Harris’ iceberg art and insisted that they could do it. The first grade one class chose Emily Carr’s totem pole and the other grade one class were highly influenced by me and chose the Jack Bush abstract art. My older students, the grade 3s were asked to choose something from the North and they agreed to paint a Ted Harrison piece.

Normally I would encourage students to paint in an artist’s style but for this project we wanted the paintings to be recognizable. I cut out large pieces of heavy paper and taped them to the wall outside each classroom. I made a few marks on the mural paper as a guideline for the students so that they could draw the foreground, middle ground and background. With the Jack Bush painting I divided the paper into sections and the students took turns drawing the lines as I held the ruler. They then labelled each section with the colour and the student who would be filling it in.

The grade 3s impressed me the most with the Ted Harrison painting that they chose. I gave  them the least amount of assistance and they drew all the detail, including the whale without any help from me. It was also the first painting to be finished so I used some of the students from this class to assist the younger students with their paintings.

All four paintings were finished with no time to spare. We reinforced the back with duct tape and then taped them to the stage wall. They were perfect and fit the entire back wall. It was encouraging to hear parents actually naming the pieces or the the painters as they walked down the hall while the students were painting. They even recognized the Jack Bush piece because they had just come back from a field trip where his paintings were being featured. No, the names were not above the paintings during the painting process!

Here they are. You can getter a better idea of the size from the last photo where they are on display at the back of the stage.

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Share Your World 2016 – Week 25

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…..check out Cee’s Share Your World and join the fun

How many languages do you you speak?

Basically I speak two languages, English and German. German was my first language and I understand it very well but I am very hesitant to use it. Growing up I had to go to German school on Saturdays and I hated it. Whenever my parents or their friends spoke to me in German I would answer in English. When I turned 18 I sang in a German choir and did so for 27 years.

What are some words that just make you smile?

The first word that makes me smile is my granddaughter’s name – Winnie. I can’t help but smile when I think of her or hear someone utter her name. Come to think of it all the names of my loved ones make me smile. Other words that make me smile are love, art, summer vacation, cottage, puppy and party.

If you were the original architect of one existing building, which building would you select?

This is tough because there are lots of buildings that I would be proud to put my name on, even ones that have been somewhat controversial. I love old and new but I think the one that stands out for me at the moment is the AGO. It is a combination of old and new. Several years ago it underwent a renovation and I simply love the lines and all the wood on the inside. The architect is Frank Gehry.

Day 1
New addition: The Italian Gallery

Would you rather have telepathy or telekinesis? (Telepathy is the communication using your brain waves, telekinesis is channeling the energy onto physical objects to cause substantial, observable physical changes.)

I think I’d rather have telepathy. It would be neat to be able to send messages without opening my mouth.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m grateful for being able to check off more items from my to do list. As you know June is extremely busy for me at school. Every time I’m able to cross off another item it takes a huge weight off my shoulders.

Things that are done:

2 retirement parties- collected money and bought gift for one

Jump Rope for Heart – money collected and prizes distributed

Report cards written, proofread and printed

Timetables for next year organized

Father’s Day gift bought and BBQ with the family

Year end school concert

Rehearsals for grade five farewell

book club for June

finished paintings with the students for the stage

son’s wedding via the internet

city finals for girls’ soccer

taking 78 students to Jays’ baseball game to sing the national anthems

This week I’m looking forward to the grade 5 farewell assembly, play day, cleaning up my office in the library, the staff party and making final arrangements for our trip to Italy. Most of all I’m looking forward to getting on that plane next Saturday. Phew! I’m tired just thinking about it.

 

 

Paul Klee Inspired Art

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….experimenting with Paul Klee’s style

The students in grades 1,2 and 3 that I teach art to were given a couple of quick assignments that could be finished in one or two periods. Seeing that we’re nearing the end of the school year this was important to me.

The first lesson I taught involved drawing a Klee style portrait. It didn’t have to be of a person. Many of the children chose to draw an animal. The technique that I used for this lesson came from Splat, Scrap and Glue Blobs and Deep Space Sparkle.

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A couple of weeks after introducing my students to Paul Klee, Carl Sonheim from  my on-line course Y is for Yellow also introduced us to Paul Klee but instead of portraits she focused on his grid paintings. Some of my classes needed a quick project that could be framed for Father’s Day so I took a chance and taught the children how to draw a grid and how to carefully use watercolours to fill in the spaces. I limited them to three colours of their choice and demonstrated how to control the water and the amount of colour to use. They learned how to mix the water with the paints and control and change the darkness and lightness of the colour. They also learned how to erase mistakes by adding more water and dabbing away the excess water.

I’m always impressed with students who actually listen and follow the directions. Very few children created ‘mud’ and those who did were able to fix it or when they started again created a much better product the second time around. One of the grade one classes framed their paintings with a frame from the dollar store and wrapped them up for Father’s Day. Children’s art always looks so nice when it’s framed. I would have loved any one of them as a gift.

 

Fun Fair and Baby Time

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….a busy three days, part 2

Last Saturday, the parent council at my school hosted the long awaited Fun Fair. For the cost of a wrist band the students enjoy an abundance of fun activities for four hours. There were inflatables, a dunk tank, face painting, games of chance with prizes, cotton candy, popcorn, a cake walk, a photo booth, video games, planting stations, video games, candy kabobs, fire trucks and police cars to explore, music, a silent auction and so much more.

I was suppose to go in the dunk tank but the water was too cold for me and I had been promised warmish water. I was hoping that as the day progressed the water would have warmed up but because the hose runs continuously it never really changes temperature. No one really seemed to notice that I bowed out. The grade 5s gladly took over my time slot and took turns all day sitting in the tank waiting to be dunked.

I did volunteer to man one of the inflatables for an hour with one other parent. There was a steady stream of children climbing up the steep ladder and coming down the equally steep slides. I was surprised that some parents allowed their ‘babies’ to go on this apparatus. Their little legs couldn’t get up the ladder very quickly and they slowed down the momentum of the ride. A couple of times we (actually the other mom) had to go up the ladder and bring the children down.

One of the highlights for me was the silent auction. This year every class painted a ceramic plate or teapot which were professionally fired. They were all beautiful  and every item was bid on.

There were lots of other items to bid on and I ended up with a beautiful pot of flowering plants, a set of necklaces, a floral print with cards and a gift certificate for a haircut. I donated two of my paintings and my friend L and I offered a ‘Tea’ for up to 4 students. The last item went for over $100.00.

All in all it was a very successful fun fair. Here are a few more shots of some of the many activities that took place that day.

When the silent auction closed, I gathered up my merchandise and headed home where our daughter and granddaughter were waiting for me but more of that in the next post.

Cheers for now!

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A Busy Three Days

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….as May comes to an end I can breathe a sigh of relief

May and June are two of the busiest months for me. Many people assume because the school year is close at hand that my workload starts to diminish as well. Nothing could be further from the truth.

May started with tryouts for the girls’ soccer team and then practices three times a week. Last week the girls played their tournament and won so practices continue for the next two weeks before they move on to the semi finals. I head up the Forest of Reading book club and last week we had our year end celebration. I wrote about that here.

One of my other pet projects is raising money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation by running a Jump Rope for Heart day. I’ve been doing this for 17 years. Every year I think that the fund raising won’t do as well as previous years and the children and the community always come together and surprise me with their generosity. Two weeks ago we had the kick off assembly for Jump Rope for Heart and sent home the pledge envelopes. On Thursday I was worried because only 12 envelopes had been returned. On Friday I was overwhelmed with the number of returns. Over 100 envelopes came back and according to one of the parents the on-line contributions were higher than previous years. Our goal this year was to raise $8 600.00. It looks like we’ve gone well above that number. I’ll know better in the next few days when the last of the envelopes come in.

Friday was a hot sunny day for our actual skipping event. Our office assistant and her husband supplied us with music for the hour while the entire school headed outside and skipped to their heart’s content. Despite the heat everyone seemed to have a good time. There were prizes for skippers who showed a lot of effort. I chose about 8 teachers to go around and select children who they thought were really working hard. These students were given a yellow ticket that they could redeem for a new skipping rope or small football. A special thanks to the Heart and Stroke Foundation for supplying the prizes.

The next two days proved to be just as busy. On Saturday we had our Fun Fair at the school and our daughter and granddaughter spent Saturday and part of Sunday with us. More about these two days in a post to follow.

Making Journals with Kids

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….I’ve always wanted to try this technique of making an art journal from one sheet of watercolour paper

As many of you know I run a book club at my school that runs for about 5 months. The books that we read all come from the Forest of Reading program which feature Canadian authors. There are different books for different levels of readers. Each program is named after a tree. For example, the primary English picture books are called Blue Spruce and the books for the junior grades are named Silver Birch.

I usually start with over 100 readers from grades 3 to 5. Each student is given a passport and each time they finish reading a book they fill in the passport with a summary of the book. They then go to the expert reader (a teacher or grade 5 student) and are questioned about that particular book. Each time they answer the questions successfully they receive a credit or two, depending on the length and difficulty of the book. This year they were given the goal of obtaining a minimum of 12 credits in order to participate in the year end celebration.

It is a very doable goal, but some students became frustrated when the book they wanted to read had been checked out. There were 120 copies of the English books and 60 copies of the French books. In the end 34 students reached the goal and one student managed to read every single book. There were exactly 50 titles to choose from. This was a record for the book club.

For our celebration we organized two activities for the students. The first activity was a drama workshop that featured one of the Silver Birch books. It was run by our dynamic drama teacher.

After that we were fortunate enough to book an author who had written one of this years non-fiction entries. Caroline Fernandez wrote Boredom Busters and talked to the children about the steps one has to go through to publish a book. The fact that amazed all of us was that for an $18.00 book the author received only 87 cents. Her presentation was very interesting and she loved the the fact that some of the students in the room had made some of the crafts from her book. 9781782491057_z

At lunch we invited the expert readers to come and join us for lunch. We ordered pizza and had juice and popsicles.

After lunch I taught the students how to make an art journal using one sheet of watercolour paper. The trickiest part was folding the paper so two of my colleagues who helped me with organizing the day pre-folded the paper. We only made the first two folds because the size of the paper was a little too large for small hands to manage but the students made the remaining folds. Then the paper was cut in three places and the folding began.

Each student was given two pieces of cardboard that they could decorate any way they wanted. I provided them with scrapbook paper, stickers, stamps, collage papers, letters, and markers and pencils. Once the covers were decorated the end papers of the folded journal were glued to the covers. Each student was also given one or two colourful elastics to hold their journals shut.

The students had a wonderful time making their personal journals and some of them started to draw and paint in them as soon as they were finished. Here are a few of the finished projects. If you would like to try making one of these journals watch the video following the picture gallery.

Here is video for making the journals:

Making a simple journal

 

Share Your World 2016 – Week 19

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….thank you Cee  for some very unusual questions this week

You win a pet monkey but this isn’t just any old monkey. It can do one trick for you whenever you want from getting a pop out of the fridge to washing your hair. What would be the trick?

When I saw this question I couldn’t help but think about the Ikea monkey and all the grief the owner went through for owning a monkey. Washing my hair? Never! I’ll think I’ll pass on this question. I could never own a monkey regardless of the talent it may have.
What caring thing are you going to do for yourself today?

Today I went to see a chiropractor. In the last two weeks I’ve had chronic pain in my upper thigh and the side of my hip. It all started on the day that I walked 18 000 steps. I thought it would go away on it’s own but the pain persisted. I discovered that I have bursitis in my hip as a direct result of that long walk. I was tugged at, pushed and pulled. It hurt! The good news is that it felt better when I was done. My homework is to do some exercises, apply ice and not start any new exercise program. No running or long walks. With a few more visits my hip should be ‘all cleaned up’ before I go to Italy in July.
What color do you feel most comfortable wearing?

Believe it or not I love wearing bright colours like royal blue and red. I also like white, peach and periwinkle.
Complete this sentence: When I travel I love to….

….check out quaint little shops, markets and art galleries. I love outdoor cafes and restaurants that the locals eat at.
Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I’m grateful for a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend. I drove to the finish line for the Sporting Life 10k Run that my oldest daughter, her partner and her brother-in-law participated in. All three finished in great times.

We then drove to Hamilton where we met up with my husband and our youngest daughter and her little family. We had a great time playing with the baby and enjoyed a wonderful meal together.

It’s been a great week at school. The children did really well at the West Conference track and field meet and many of them are moving on to the city finals. All the plans for our Forest of Reading book club celebration are now in place and the silent auction contributions from the classes have been completed by the students and are ready to be fired. Here is the platter that my grade 3 class designed and painted. I did the black lines. I can’t wait to see what it looks like after it’s been fired. IMG_8139

The other thing that I’m grateful for was the amazing lunch that the parents put on for the staff for ‘Teacher Appreciation Day’. They really go all out. They used the library and came in the night before to set it up and decorate it. The food was over the top and there was so much left over that we had a second meal the next day. I also appreciated the fact that there were lots of things  that I could eat and still stay on my ‘diet’.

I’m looking forward to a great day on Friday when the students who earned their 12 reading credits come to our Forest of Reading Celebration. We have an author coming to talk to the students, a drama workshop and a hands on journal making workshop plus a pizza lunch for the successful students and the staff who participated as expert readers.

I’m also looking forward to creating more paintings. I’ll write more about that in another post in the next few days.

Cheers!

 

Starting With a Child’s Piece of Art

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….an assignment from one of my many on-line classes

One of the classes that I’ve taken this year is from Sketch Book Skool.  We had 6 different instructors who all assigned different sketching and painting projects. One that especially intrigued me involved getting a young child to draw in my sketch book and then work a drawing around the child’s original piece.

At school I have a couple of students who like to come to the library after school and help me put books away. When I was given this assignment I asked J in grade one if he would like to draw in my book and then allow me to draw around his work and create a new piece. He was more than happy to do that and he took my book and very carefully and thoughtfully began drawing his picture. I thought he might draw the typical house and tree with him and his family standing in front but to my surprise he drew six flower pots with a flower in each.

Here is J’s work and then what I created from it. I used watercolour and ink around the pencil crayon drawings.

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Grade 3s Embrace Britto’s Bold Colours

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….Romero Britto is a Brazilian born artist based in Florida

Romero Britto is a well known pop artist whose work appears in posters, t-shirts, mugs and ceramic ware. I first came across his work last year when Second Cup commissioned him to create a line of coffee mugs and other dishes for their coffee shops. He uses very vibrant colours and bold lines. Today I would like to share some of the work that my grade three class did that was inspired by Britto’s style. After finishing this piece I photographed and printed their work and mounted the photos on blank cards that the class could send to their pen pals.

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The following photos are courtesy of http://www.britto.com/images/homepage/OpeningBackground.jpg

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