Winter Printmaking

In January, we have been experimenting with a variety of different printmaking techniques.  Our first printmaking project was a mono print.  Mono printing is a form of printmaking that has images or lines that you can only be made once.

We wanted to make a pair of mittens that was the same. To do this we folded a piece of paper in half and traced one of our hands on one side.  Then we painted small sections onto the pencil outline.  While the paint was still wet, we folded our paper  in half so the paint would make a print on the opposite side of the paper.   We continued that process until the outline was complete and then added lines, dots, hearts, etc to fill in the rest.

Our second printmaking project was a block or lino print.  We used a styrofoam plate as our block and then "carved" into the styrofoam with a pencil.  Once everyone had "carved" a snowman on their styrofoam, we rolled on white paint with a brayer.  Then we flipped the styrofoam over and printed our image onto construction paper. We had to experiment with the amount of paint and pressure we used so we would get the best print.

For the last printmaking experiment we did we used Lego Duplo bricks.  After we made our beautiful ice castles out of real ice, we kept the excitement going.  We dipped the lego bricks into black paint and then printed the square/rectangle shape onto a paper.  As we printed, we made sure to make the shape of a castle.  The results were stunning.

Ice Castles

It all started with a picture and then a wonder... We wondered how do people make ice castles?

We looked at a variety of different ice castle pictures on the SMARTboard.  We noticed that they were all different shapes and sizes.  Some used ice blocks and other used icicles. We thought it would be really cool if we could make our own.

One problem was, we don't have any ice.  We came up with the idea of making our own. We collected little cups and put water, food colouring and sparkles in the cups.  We mixed the water up and put them outside to freeze.

We even wrote a sign that said "Do Not Touch" to make sure that no one would touch our cups. 

When we got to school today, we were ready to work in small groups so we could build our very own ice castles.  Everyone experimented with salt and water to see what would be the best way to make the ice stick together.   It was very cold work, but the results were beautiful.

Another thing were are beginning to experiment with is to document our own learning.  We used our iPads to take pictures while we made our ice castles.  Then we used these pictures to make a book to show what we did and learned.

The Morning Class 

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

The Afternoon Class

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Fun in the Snow!

One of the jobs we worked very hard on this week was to write a book about ways to have fun in the snow.  We are going to share our book with students from a school in Florida who may not have had much experience with winter activities.

With our audience in mind we read many winter books and then brainstormed about all the things that we like to do in the snow.  Then we drew a picture of us playing in the snow.  We made sure to add lots of details.  We painted the pictures to make them extra special for our audience.

When it was time to write, everyone was very eager to get started and to share their story.  It is fantastic to see how confident the kindergarten students are getting when it comes to writing and sharing their ideas.

 The Morning Class

The Afternoon Class

**Some students did not have a chance to read their story today.  The books will be reposted next week when they are complete.

The Mitten

We started the new year off by reading the story The Mitten by Jan Brett.  In the story a boy goes out to play and drops one of his mittens in the snow.  While he is off playing, different animals find the mitten and climb in. We used the ideas in the story to help us create, write, count and play this week.


CREATE: We used an app called PicCollage to help us create our own version of the story.  (We found different objects and toys in our classroom, placed them on a big white mitten and then took a picture.  We then labeled each of the things we put in our mitten.)

WRITE:  We are getting very good at writing and we are using many of the sight words we are learning.  As a class we practised making different sentences about the animals going into the mitten, Then each of us got to write our own story/sentence.

COUNT: We are also getting very good at counting different groups or sets of objects.  After we counted, we added the numbers together and wrote down the numbers.

 PLAY: Another fun and interactive way to experience a story is to act it out.  We taped a big mitten on the floor and used some animal masks to re-create The Mitten.  We hope you enjoy watching!