Reflecting on this Past Year

Posted on August 28, 2017 by Mama Cormier

…..today I’m officially a senior citizen

There has to be a better designation than senior citizen when you turn 65. I know there are many perks when you reach this age but it also comes with labels such as golden oldie, old fart, grandma, oldster, senior, geezer, geriatric, old-timer and blue hair. Even though I’m a proud grandmother to Winnie I don’t feel old.

I look back on this past year and am proud of what I’ve done and happy to have such amazing friends and a wonderful family. I knew that this was the year to retire from teaching. I still loved the job but there were days when I was just plain tired and sometimes I didn’t feel that I fit in anymore. I didn’t want to be one of those crotchety old teachers that criticized younger teachers for doing things differently. Sometimes I didn’t like what went on but I wanted to leave on a happy note so I kept quiet for the most part. The only people I would share my views with were people closer to my age and those who were also retiring. I have to admit that some of my favourite teachers were those much younger than me. I loved their humour and zest for life.

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Of course the students are what kept me going as a teacher. They weren’t always easy to teach and over the years the job grew increasingly more difficult but in the end the love and gratitude I received in the form of cards, art work, letters of appreciation and countless hugs made it all worthwhile.

This past year I’ve seen my own children continue to grow into responsible and amazing adults. They are all married now and our one and only grandchild is growing like a weed. She is my pride and joy. Last night she kept saying Oma birthday, Oma birthday while rolling around in her crib. She clearly knows everyone in the family now and can say everyone’s name. She picks up at least 10 new words every day and we have to be so careful what we say in front of her.

My retirement is not quite working out the way I thought it would. I was hoping to do more travelling but it is still early days. Last May my father moved into our house. At 90 he’s still very independent but we’re a little worried about leaving him for too long. So far the longest we’ve left him alone is four days. We’re hoping to travel to London, England in November to visit with our son before he leaves to live in New York City in the coming year. Someone recently asked me if Dad was coming with us. We’ve tried to convince him to make at least one more trip to Germany to visit his brother. It looks like that won’t happen for at least another year, God willing, and I’m not sure if a trip to London would be in the cards for him as well. We’ll have to wait and see.

So as I turn 65 today I can honestly say that I’ve had a wonderful life. Now I look forward to my next adventure and hopefully I’ve inherited my father’s genes so that I can enjoy the next 30 years of my life with the same joie de vivre.

First of Many Retirement Parties

Posted on July 18, 2017 by Mama Cormier

…..not sure why but this is the fourth time I’ve tried to write about this

As many of you know, I retired from teaching on June 30. Four of us all retired this year so there were many parties to attend. The first party was put on by the Toronto District School Board. I’ve been with this board for my entire career.

Back in May over 900 employees from the board were celebrated. That’s how many people retired this year. The highlight of the evening happened at the end of the evening when each of us was gifted a bronze school bell. At the countdown every recipient rung their bell at the same time. It was deafening. In the video below only three of us were ringing the bells.

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Spring Has Sprung

Posted on March 20, 2017 by Mama Cormier

….in honour of the first day of spring I give you ‘flowers painted by my grade 2s and 3s

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A Garden of Spring Flowers in Paint

Posted on March 19, 2017 by Mama Cormier

….in this part of the world spring is not close at hand

Looking at blogs that originate in Ireland, the United Kingdom, parts of Europe and the west coast of North America I’m amazed to see so many gardens that are already in bloom with beautiful spring flowers. With some luck we may see our first daffodil in late April but most of our flowers won’t appear until May.

To get us in the spring mood I painted some simple made up flowers using watercolours and circle shapes. For the background I used a scraping technique that I learned from Carla Sonheim. Once the paint was dry I added more detail, sometimes with more paint but mostly with black ink from a Sharpie. I liked the final product so much I adapted it for my students and when I return to school this week I will plaster the walls with their beautiful gardens of flowers. I will share their work with you later this week.

Creating Ginger Root Creatures

Posted on March 7, 2017 by Mama Cormier

…..a grade 2/3 art project

For one of my assignments with Carla Sonheim’s 2017 Year Long Class: 365 we were instructed to take a piece of ginger root and draw the shape onto a piece of paper. Then were to take three colours and add detail to the shape to create some kind of fantastic creature. This was so much fun that I gave the same assignment to my grade 2 and grade 3 students. I bought a few pieces of ginger root and photo copied some photos of ginger root that I found on the internet. Here are the samples that I made to demonstrate the procedure to my classes.

The children chose the ginger root shape that they wanted to copy and they were encouraged to put their creature in a setting and give them a name. Here is a sampling of their creations:

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More Collage Art by my Grade Three Classes

Posted on January 29, 2017 by Mama Cormier

….I love the finished collage projects that my grade three art classes produced

It took close to three weeks to get this assignment finished. The first week we collected and assorted coloured pages from magazine and discarded books. The second week we cut up and glued geometric shapes into cityscapes or country landscapes. In the final class we added line detail and dots to give the scene texture and interest. I think the boys and girls did a wonderful job.

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More Collage Art

Posted on December 27, 2016 by Mama Cormier

….from a different grade 3 class

I love how unique each piece is. This class started this assignment when I was away. The concept of creating a cityscape of buildings clearly wasn’t on the radar for some of these students but I can’t fault them when I wasn’t there to give them the instructions. Some of them also created more of a fantasy land with flying turtles and smiling buildings but I love that too.

Pinterest is a Teacher’s Best Friend

Posted on December 13, 2016 by Mama Cormier

….for art lessons, teaching math, classroom rules, class management and Christmas crafts

Last week we hosted our annual Craft Night at our school. It’s an event that the community of parents and students loves to attend. For weeks in advance the teachers pair up with a colleague (some go solo) and scour the internet for craft ideas that small children and their parents can successfully complete in 10 to 15 minutes or less.

The parent council funds the evening and each teacher is given a set amount of money to purchase supplies. It works out to approximately $1.00 per craft. This year some of the crafts included bees wax candles, decorating glass ornaments, making bath salts, and decorating cookies.

I went straight to Pinterest for inspiration and came across these beautiful paper trees mounted on a disc of spruce wood. Lyckoslanten is a Finnish blogger who posted this simple craft over at Lyckoslanten. I didn’t discover the translation button till much later but I easily figured out how to recreate this craft.

The tricky part was figuring out how to get the wood. At first I thought I could pick up branches from camp but that didn’t happen. Then I thought I could use the cut-offs from Christmas trees but we didn’t get our tree until after Craft Night.

into intoA week before the event I went to a Winter Market in the Junction. While there I saw a couple of vendors who used birch wood to create some of their crafts. I also saw some beautiful trees made from birch wood. I asked them where they got their wood. One of the vendors offered to cut all the discs for me but at a price of course and it would have used up most of my budget. In hindsight it might have been worth it. The other vendor suggested that I buy the birch logs from a garden centre and use a chop saw to cut them up. A much cheaper option.

I went with the cheaper option and spent two evening cutting up two twelve foot birch branches into about 180 discs. I couldn’t belief the amount of sawdust it created. I spent almost as much time cleaning up as I did cutting. After I cut the discs I also had to drill holes into each disc for the skewers to fit. My friend L photocopied Christmas sheet music onto 150 sheets of photocopy paper. We tried heavier card stock but it was more difficult to fold.

On the night of the event we set up the tables at the back of the library with all the supplies that people needed to complete the trees. We added some tiny gift boxes that could be added to the base and some stars and snowflakes that could be glued onto the paper.

The entire evening took only an hour but it was extremely busy and I spent most of my time punching holes into the pleated paper so that the skewers could go through the middle. By the way, the best tool for this turned out to be an awl and a hammer. All in all it was a very successful night and everyone loved their trees.

Gathering Colours from Magazines and Old Books

Posted on December 4, 2016 by Mama Cormier

….and then cutting them into squares, rectangles, circles and triangles to create buildings

The advantage of cutting out shapes from magazines or books is the added texture one gets. It is easier to just cut up construction paper but the act of looking for colour swatches in magazines teaches children and adults about the vast range of one colour (i.e., red can be cool (blue undertones) or warm (more yellow undertones), dark (with the addition of black) or light (by adding white) and vibrant or muted).

After a class of cutting and sorting colours we were ready to start cutting our shapes and layering our pieces to create a collage of buildings. My grade threes were allowed to create a landscape of countryside buildings or a cityscape and they were encouraged to add foreground details and/or background details. The last step involved adding details with a black Sharpie and paint dots to make the whole piece come alive. The following are examples from one of my grade three classes.

Crazy Hair Art

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Mama Cormier

….thanks to Mary from Be Creative Mary for this great art project

I wasn’t going to do this with all my classes but when the first finished pieces went up on display all of my students wanted to know when they were going to do the same project.

After the first group finished this project I realized that I had to put some restrictions on their enthusiasm. I had to remind students that this project was about the crazy hair coming out of the top of their heads and not what came out of their noses. Most of my art students are in grade 3 and a small handful are in grade 2 this year.

After taking their head shots I converted the photo into black and white and printed them on simple photocopy paper. I cut out all the photos and removed most of their hair. Seeing their reactions was priceless. I did have to stress that the hair they created needed some shape so that colour could be added to it. I didn’t want them to simply add a scribble over their heads.

Here are some of the finished pieces that have already found their way onto the bulletin boards in the hallway of our school.