Open House

Thank you to all the families that came to our Open House. It was fantastic seeing the kinders share all their hard work and learning.

Sharing his Portfolio 

Showing off all her hard work!

Reading our Pigeon Class Book

Showing how to make a pattern on the Smartboard

And a BIG THANK YOU to all families for having some fun in our Pigeon Photo Booth!  

Pigeon Party

We love reading Pigeon books by Mo Willems.  We love them so much that we wrote our own Pigeon story called "Don't Let the Pigeon Come to Kindergarten."

The Morning Class 

The Afternoon Class

To celebrate our completed book, we had a class Pigeon Party.  We started by decorating our Pigeon Party hats with sparkly gems.  You can't have a Pigeon Party without a proper party hat.

We played the Hot Dog Game on the Smartboard.  If you would like to play this game at home, click here : Hot Dog Game

We made a Pigeon snack by counting out the correct number of pretzels, marshmallows, chocolate chips and cereal.

Everyone drew and then painted a pigeon on our class mural. 

Mr. V. helped take some very funny pictures at our Pigeon Photo Booth and played Hot Dog and Cookie Toss. 

Abstract Art with Claudia

This week we were so lucky to have an artist come to our school and share her talents.  Claudia Evans-Menard is a retired high school art teacher that is now a full time artist.  

On our first visit, she showed us some of the abstract paintings she has created. We looked carefully and began to see different things/images within her paintings.

She explained how to set up a work/painting area, how to mix colours and gave a short demonstration of different lines and shapes to paint.

Then we explored with the paint and tried to mix different colours.  Claudia also let us experiment with a special kind of painted called Interference paint.  This paint changes colours in different lights and makes everything look shiny. 

On our second visit, Claudia explained how she looks for different shapes and lines in the paint.  We used a black ball-point pen to help define the shapes we saw.  

After we added the black lines to our practise pieces, we started to work on a larger piece of paper.  We used what we learned and started to create our very own abstract masterpieces.

This little friend made sound effects to help with her painting. (Just like Ms. Dowd does)

On our third and last visit, we added black lines to our larger paintings, special gold paint and more Interference paint for detail. 

Peace and Remembrance Day

 Field of Poppies, Vincent Van Gogh

For Remembrance Day, we painted a field of poppies that was inspired by artists Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet.  We noticed that the poppies did not have a lot of detail, but we could still tell they were poppies.  We tried to create the same impressionistic style by using pastels and paint on black paper.

Poppy Field in Argenteuil, Claude Monet

We used an app called Adobe Voice to share what Peace means to us. 

Here is what Peace means to the Morning Kindergarten Class

And here is what Peace means to the Afternoon Kindergarten Class

We created a collaborative piece of art with our Buddies as our symbol of Peace.  Every student created a special strand of beads that now hangs on a branch in the Kindergarten room and later on will be hung in our Buddies classroom.

After attending the beautiful Remembrance Day Service this morning, here is what we had to say:

"It was sad because the soldiers died." - Lizzie

"I liked seeing the pictures of the soldiers." - Marcus

"I liked the singing/songs." - Brody, Graham, Sydney, Joshua, Zhane

"I liked singing O Canada" - Drake, Akshat

"I am happy the soldiers help us." - Lily

"The singing was really good." - Logann

"I liked the pictures of the army trucks." - Dominic

"I want the soldiers to come back to life."  - Daman

"I liked when the whole school sang at the end." - Jordyn

"It reminded me about the soldiers like Morgan's Dad." - Brynn

"I liked the songs." - Matthew, Jaxon

"It make me think about when the soldiers were in the war.  It was sad." - Eva

"I thought it was great because my Daddy was in it." - Morgan

Structure Building Challenge

During choice time, one of our favourite things to play and explore with are the blocks.  When we first began to build with the blocks, it was very common to hear a big crash! There was a lot of frustration and sad feelings when all that hard work went tumbling to the floor.

One of the first towers built - seconds before it crashed down

We knew we had to do some problem solving and try to figure out how to make a better structure. Our play buddies have been a great inspiration.  The older students modelled how they make strong and elaborate structures.  We watched carefully and practised what we learned.

Then, Ms. Dowd saw a fantastic block structure on Instagram and shared the pictures with everyone in kindergarten.  We asked for the pictures to be printed out so we could try and build it.  Everyone worked very hard to build a similar structure.

It was like a light was turned on!  The structures were staying up!  No More Crashes!!

Since then a Structure Building Challenge has exploded in the room.  Students are working together to create and build interesting and strong structures. Once the structures are complete, we take a pictures and hang it in our  Hall of Fame.  It is so great to see the students problem solving, using their language and social skills as well as their imaginations!

This structure was so elaborate that we had to take a picture from each angle