Tickle Trunk Players – Mask Making Workshop

Posted on December 16, 2011 by carriegelson

On Tuesday, December 13th, the Tickle Trunk Players came to Seymour school and put on an afternoon performance. Wonderful!

Students in Division 5 were very fortunate to participate in a mask making workshop in the morning. Such success!

First, students learned about shapes that are frequently used in First Nations masks. Khai actually made a picture out of all of his shapes.

Then students chose either a bear, a wolf or a raven shape to make a mask.

Masks were striking keeping to just the colours of white, red and black.

This wolf mask was very detailed.

In animal groups, students were able to move to the beat of the drum around the room. But we did come together for a group photo!

Thanks to Christine, our workshop leader! Such a positive experience for the children!

Nutrition Workshop!

Posted on December 1, 2011 by carriegelson

We were lucky to have Maggie from Kin’s Farm Market and COBS Bread come in to our classroom today and lead us through some activities to learn more about nutritious food.

Maggie was enthusiastic and had lots of fun activities for the students to try, like a guessing game where they had to touch a fruit without seeing it and describe it to their classmates. Everyone wanted to share their observations!

We then got to smell, touch and interact with a dragon fruit, a plum and some grapes before finally getting the chance to eat these fruits!

What does it smell like?

Before we engaged in some mindful smelling and tasting of some bread samples and pieces of fruit, student helpers helped Maggie pass out samples to everyone and some students delighted in making food faces!

Smile if you like fruit!

We sniffed and savoured our fruit and then shared our observations.

Purity: White bread goes away faster in your mouth and whole wheat takes longer to chew

Shae-Lynn: This fruit is seedy! (dragon fruit) The seeds crunch when you chew and it sounds weird!

Thanks Maggie for letting us be food explorers! We always appreciate the opportunity to learn more and become interested in healthy foods!

Cowboy hats and Country dancing!

Posted on November 27, 2011 by carriegelson

We knew a big party was coming! So we started getting ready!

A fun afternoon of decorating hats got us into the mood for talking about cowboys, country music, horseback riding and just what happens at the Grey Cup anyway . . .

Many of us added our names and walked around the room admiring how we all looked in our fancy hats.

But who could have predicted this?

Thanks to the Calgary Grey Cup Committee for bringing us a party we won’t soon forget! The band High Steppin’ Daddy had everyone kicking up their heels and twirling with our guests including Charlie Horse who managed to not step on any toes! Read Janet Steffenhagen‘s story in the Vancouver Sun here. Photos by Ward Perrin.

via Vancouver Sun

Deborah Hodge visits Division 5!

Posted on November 22, 2011 by carriegelson

On November 15th, 2011, local author Deborah Hodge visited Division 5 to share her books, her process and her knowledge with us.

Author Deborah Hodge

Deborah Hodge has a fantastic blog to check out and even wrote about her visit with us at Seymour! Students were very excited when I let them know that we had an author coming to visit. When Deborah came to the door just before the recess bell, she was greeted by a huge hug from Sergio who looked up at her and said: “Hi Deborah. I really like to read books.” During recess, Deborah set up all of her books around the classroom and when students returned, Shae-Lynn exclaimed, “Did you really write all of those books?” It was a very impressive display!

Deborah explained that when she had been a teacher, many of her students wanted to read non-fiction books but the text and language was just not at their level. She was motivated to create non-fiction titles that were much more accessible – full of fabulous non-fiction features like labelled diagrams, a glossary, fact boxes and interesting facts! Each book contains something life sized in a drawing at the back of each book.

Deborah’s first book was Bears, a popular title in our classroom.

Deborah began sharing the steps in making a non-fiction book like doing the research, writing the text, revising and editing, working with an illustrator, etc. She shared examples of each step as she described it. At one point about mid-way through the series of steps, one student let out a big sigh. “Wow! There really are a lot of steps in making a non-fiction book!

Deborah also shared some cool facts she learned as she researched her various books. A few favourites of ours:

An anaconda is as long as a bus and as heavy as two big men
When a polar bear cub is born, it is as small as the palm of your hand
A mother deer leaves the fawn alone when it is first born so that her scent won’t attract predators.

Deborah also brought in animal fur and animal skulls to show us. Very interesting and fun to interact with!

Deborah left us with more than a great learning experience – about how non-fiction books are made, about animals, and about furs and skulls. She left us with some lovely gifts.

First she signed our classroom copy of Lily and the Mixed up Letters. This wonderful book about a little girl who struggles learning to read is of course written by Deborah and illustrated by France Brassard. It is a favourite of both Ms. Gelson and Ms. Hibbert.

Then Deborah gifted our classroom with two of her latest and greatest books! We plan to delve into these books in the Spring when we can learn more about growing food in different places.

Then, last but not least, Deborah gave each student a copy of one of her non-fiction titles.

I am a big believer of children owning their own books and having their own book collections – the power of “books in hand and in home.” Deborah signed each book for each child and in the last week I have heard students making comments like, “Did you read about . . . . in our book?” Thank you Deborah for such an amazing morning and such generosity!

Happy Halloween!

Posted on November 1, 2011 by carriegelson

What a fun and exciting day we had today!

We started with a spooky read aloud, The Soup Bone written by Tony Johnston and illustrated by Margot Tomes.

This book is about a little lonely old woman who goes in search of a bone to make her soup a little more tasty. No bones in the the cupboards or the drawers or on the shelves. Not one bone anywhere. So the little old woman decides to go digging for a bone. This struck us as quite disgusting! “Eeew! The bone will be dirty!” ” Will it be a dino bone?” “Maybe a skeleton bone?” Well a skeleton was exactly what she found. The little old lady shrieked and ran away. When the skeleton decided to “skittle- skattle” into the house, Markus piped up “So finally she’s got some company!” And as we read on, we decided this story was a friendship story after all!

Following a spooky story time in the library with Ms. S after recess, we did math.

Today it was Pumpkin Patch Glyphs. Everyone had to design a pumpkin in a way that answered four questions.

Then everyone else had to look at the legend to learn more about their classmates as they examined the features of each pumpkin: stem, eyes, nose and mouth.

For example, someone who loves chocolate would have a pumpkin with triangle eyes.

Is your favourite treat chips? Well then circle eyes for you. Lots of fun to look at all of the pumpkins up on the wall and make conclusions – most people like scary costumes for example. Glyphs are a way of organizing and representing data!

Some completed pumpkins:

Hailey is a chocolate lover who is not so sure about pumpkin pie.

Shae-Lynn does NOT like pumpkin pie and has yet to try pumpkin seeds.

Truman likes sweet treats and strange costumes.

In the afternoon, it was all about pumpkins!

These unsuspecting pumpkins donated by the Rotary Club . . .

turned into fabulous jack o’ lanterns with the help of our Big Buddies from Division 1.

Even a little bride on her way to a wedding stopped in to do some carving!

Final results looked something like this: successful carving and a big mess 🙂

Happy Halloween 2011!

Little buddies and big smiles

Posted on October 13, 2011 by carriegelson

Today we invited our little buddies in K/1 up for some actual book sharing! We read favourites like:

Alphabet Adventure by Audrey and Bruce Wood

How do Dinosaurs Count to Ten by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague

Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss

The engagement, the smiles and the chattering said it all! What a fun experience! We can’t wait until next week 🙂

Reading an alphabet adventure story.

Reading about dump trucks and zooming cars.

A quiet few minutes on the carpet

Time to stop and discuss what is happening.

Searching for letters!

Rocket Art (Finished Pieces)

Posted on May 14, 2011 by carriegelson

Ms. Chen has posted our finished Rocket Art pieces in the classroom and on the bulletin boards which surround our classroom. Displayed all together, they look amazing! If you haven’t seen our work in process, read more about how these pieces were created here.

This week students were able to complete fold out panels about looking back to Earth. Ms. Chen used Steve Jenkins’ book Looking Down to illustrate zooming in to a specific object – from looking at Earth and then zooming in possibly to a specific street, then maybe a particular house and then finally to a single window within the house.

This is such a fantastic book to illustrate zooming in on a particular object – first from far away and then getting closer and closer.

A very interesting journey in looking at the world from a different perspective.

Closer and closer and close

Read about how this book was conceived on Steve Jenkins’ site.

What is amazing about this book is that it is “told” strictly through visual images – as a wordless picture book.

This is Jena‘s art. Now in addition to her rocket ship, planets and drifting astronaut, she has attached her mini fold out book which depicts looking back to the Earth.

First she drew a portion of the Earth – oceans and land covered by forest. In the subsequent drawings she zooms closer and closer into the forest scene.

Here is Alyson’s completed work. We loved how she used the cellophane to represent the emissions coming from her rocket as it zoomed through space.

Her mini booklet zooms in to a single room in her building.

Such a colourful piece!

Hailey isn’t quite finished her mini zoom in booklet but her art so far, is wonderful.

Her astronaut’s suit is extremely detailed and she was able to create a very efective planet by layering her cellophane pieces.

Beautiful.

Such a fun and successful project. Thank-you Ms. Chen!

Off on a rocket ship!

Posted on May 10, 2011 by carriegelson

Our class has been working with Ms. Linda Chen, a student teacher from UBC on a multi-step art project and we are almost finished!

By the end of the week, we hope to have our finished pieces hanging up in our classroom and on outside bulletin boards. But for now, a sneak peek!

Students made collage rockets, drew astronauts and today worked on the composition of their pieces – placing rocket and astronaut in a space scene along with planets. Such fun!

Inspired by some images from this book: Joey and Jet in Space by James Yang.

Check out our room today!

Bird’s Eye view of a table busy creating!

Students are placing rocket ships in specific places on their page, thinking about where to put the astronaut and how they want to organize the planets in their space scene.

Everyone was on task and engaged!

If you look closely at the bottom left hand corner of the picture below, you can see that Eddy has placed his astronaut astride his rocket.

Talk about riding a rocket to the moon!

Students are using colourful planets cut from cellophane. Very effective!

Ms. Chen cut scraps of cellophane for students to use to decorate. She did a mini lesson on colour theory and had the students think about how the colours placed together might mix.

Some students used the pieces to decorate a planet. Others used the pieces to create a feeling of movement in space or as gasses or dust floating around the planets.

We were pleasantly surprised at how unique each piece was!

Students loved working with such bright colours.

Here is a piece where you can see the details of the rocket made using a collage of magazine images. The rockets are all absolutely gorgeous!

In this image the lone astronaut floats next to a planet as the rocket zooms by. An alien seems to be peeking at us from the blue swirly planet.

Keep checking for our finished pieces!

Pink Day in our classroom!

Posted on February 25, 2011 by carriegelson

We have been sharing this lovely book recommended by Ms. Hong at Strathcona Library – You and Me Together – Moms, Dads, and Kids Around the World by Barbara Kerley – a few pages here and there all week. It is a wonderful collection of photos of parents interacting with their children – doing the most natural of things – making a mess, telling a tale, taking a nap or catching a bus. Images from all over the world – make the diversity we can celebrate a truly beautiful and yet everyday thing. Joy within families, in the daily routines of life – just lovely. My students have loved guessing where in the world the photos were taken. Sometimes we are exactly right and sometimes not even close! The text accompanying the photos in the back gives us a little story behind each picture.

I have been waiting for Pink Day to share this amazing book with my students. Spaghetti on a Hot Dog Bun is written by Maria Dismondy and vibrantly illustrated by Kimberly Shaw-Peterson. The picture of Lucy, eyes welling up with tears after she has been bullied is so so powerful! The message of this book is all about courage – courage to stand up for yourself but also courage to forgive and reach out to others. Lucy has been bullied by Ralph in some truly nasty ways. When he gets stuck on the monkey bars, she has the opportunity to get back at him. Instead she realizes, looking at him so full of fear, that just like her Papa Gino told her, Ralph has a heart with feelings. Lucy offers her help, demonstrating courage to do the right thing – treat others the way she wants to be treated.

We used this book as a springboard for our Pink Day writing and discussions.

Hajhare: I learned that words can be strong but you can stand up if you are bullied.

Ricky: If someone bullies you, never bully them back. Paybacks aren’t nice. Bullying and fighting change your body. If someone bullies you, you will need all the courage you have to stand up.

Miami: Why do bullies bully? Do they learn it from someone? Do they do it for a reason? That question I can’t figure out.

Our school paraded around the grounds on a freezing February day holding pink balloons. Our message floated above our heads and rang true in our hearts as we marched to take a stand against bullying together.