Nursery and Kindergarten students have been practicing their counting and subitizing! After reading the story Fish Eyes, by Lois Ehlert, students designed their own colourful fish in the Paint program. Next, we grouped fish together in “schools,” and children created and narrated a digital class story. Click on the link here to hear Anita’s story.
Nursery + Kindergarten students explored the work of Jackson Pollock. We experimented with action painting using different tools: paintbrushes, our hands and sticks. We also explored the website JacksonPollock.org using the SMART Board, and talked about this famous American painter’s unique style.
The children used Google Earth to look at our neighbourhood from a “bird’s view.” We used the SMART Board to travel up and down the streets, looking at all the interesting buildings and streets from above. This led into a discussion about maps. Children then made their own large-scale neighbourhood maps, and told stories about places they visit in their community, and how they get there.
The road goes right over here to Strathcona School. There’s a kind of road here out the back, and we have to turn at the sidewalk. And there’s a big giant house there, and right at the side – it’s Safeway. I don’t know who’s house it is. There a store on the corner where we buy egg rolls and candy. It’s Jemy’s. Here’s the fence where the dogs are. Some are black and some are brown. I don’t go there. There’s a tree in back of my house. I think it is 100, 176 people. That’s a big number, isn’t it?
I go to the bank. And Dollarama. My mom and me go there.
I have a corner store. You just have to go across and there’s the corner store. I get ice cream and chips.
This is my mom’s room, and my brother’s room, and my room, and my other sister’s room, and my sister’s in my mom’s tummy.
To begin our Arts Extravaganza week, the Nursery + Kindergarten children had a chance to create three different handmade books.
We worked with artist Janet Carroll to create very interesting book structures.
We can’t wait to fill them with good stories!
Nursery and Kindergarten children have begun to talk about their neighbourhood – their community. What kinds of people make up our community? What kinds of places make up a community? To begin our investigation, children painted their homes; next we created a 3-dimensional “landscape” of our neighbourhood. Here are the beginnings of a neighbourhood…
Kindergarten students are learning about warm and cool colours, and are experimenting with colour on their Picasso-style cubist self-portraits. Once we have finished painting these LARGE scale self-portraits, we are hoping to engage others in an “art talk” about our work. Special thank you to Mrs. Ledger for her ongoing help with this big project!
It’s Student-Led conference time! Please bring your children to school at your scheduled conference time. They have so much to share with you. Here is the agenda for the Nursery/Kindergarten student-led conference. Your child has practiced and prepared for you, but please help them read each item so they don’t forget anything!
We are proud to announce the completion of our first ever claymation movie, A Day in the Life of a Spider. Nursery and Kindergarten students wrapped up their inquiry on spiders with this movie, showing their understanding about spiders: the parts of the spider’s body, how they build their webs, how they catch their prey, and what they eat. We learned that a claymation movie takes a very long time to make! We had to be careful with the camera, not to “jiggle” it too much, and we had to move our clay characters very slowly. We hope you enjoy our short movie!spider-web-movie
We have been learning about texture in art. Kindergarten students did a “look-draw” of their house using black marker, and then added interesting textures, using a variety of lines. Later, they painted their texture houses using bright, vibrant watercolours.
The Nursery + Kindergarten children are back from Spring Break, eager and excited to learn. This morning, we spent time going over the school rules during whole-school assembly.
Next, we looked at a slideshow that looked at the characteristics of different spiders. We watched a short video about the black widow spider, and learned that the female has a red hourglass shape on her abdomen, marking her as one of the most poisonous spiders.
"I made a spider. Black Widow."
"Daddy Long Legs"
"I made a black widow."
Next, the children used the Paint program to draw spiderwebs, lived in by a spider of their choice. They also wrote short stories to match their pictures.
