Art - Spring Flowers

This Friday, we all enjoy a long forest and neighbourhood walk with the sunny weather!
The children were told to find some spring flowers on their walk. Some children found wild flowers in the forest; others were amazed by the beautiful flowers our neighbours have planted in their garden.

During our neighbourhood walk, Cameron and Bela also saw some constructors building house. The boys immediately connected to our community unit and said "I see some community helpers!" How lovely to see our children recall their learning experience. 

After the long walk, the children had a rest on the grass and listened to the story, "The Imaginary Garden" by Andrew Larsen. In the story, the little girl creates beautiful garden full of beautiful plants on a great big canvas with her grandfather. Through the story, the children explored how to use paint brushes to draw certain flowers, like tulips, scilla and daffodils. 

We tried the brush techniques in the book. Using dots and strokes, the children created their own spring garden with water colour. 

It was such a nice painting experience when everyone was actually surrounded by the beautiful spring flowers! 

Art - Night Shift

"How We Organize Ourselves" 
Central Idea: The work people perform helps build community
Lines of Inquiry:

• The jobs people do in our community support its development (function)
• We take on roles each day and this helps us build a strong community (responsibility)

"When do people work?" the children were asked at the beginning of the art activity today.
"Morning time! and afternoon!" the children answered.
"Do you know there are people who work during night time?" I asked the children.
"Policemen," Bela said.
"Firefighters and bus drivers, " Cameron answered.
"Construction workers, " Brendan said.
Here, we introduced more community helpers through the book "Night Shift" by Jessie Hartland.
The children learned that there are street sweepers, security guards, newspaper printer and road workers on night shifts. 
Here were some questions the children asked along the stories:
"Why do they have to work at night?"
"What do these community helpers do in the morning?"

"Policemen work at night to protect people all day and all night!"

We decided to created a poster about community helpers on night shift.
On a paper doll, the children drew the special uniform or hats that night shift community helpers have.



Inspired by The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, we introduced "Pointillism" skill to the children. To create a night city scene, the children used sponge dabbers to make little dots on the poster.

"There are stars and street lights!"

  








Through the children book illustration, the children had a chance to explore people who do their job in night time. In order to build a strong community, people take different shift, even in night time!

Art - Community Garden

"How We Organize Ourselves" 
Central Idea: The work people perform helps build community
Lines of Inquiry:

• We take on roles each day and this helps us build a strong community (responsibility)

"The Curious Garden" by Peter Brown was read to the children to start our collaborative art project this Friday! While out exploring one day, a little boy named Liam discovers a struggling garden and decides to take care of it. Slowly, the garden spreads out and turns the dark, gray city into a lively, green community! At the end of the story, everyone joins Liam to make the city more beautiful and greener.

Instead of individual artwork, we decided to create a big garden poster to keep in our classroom. The children were excited to do a multimedia collage, using flowers, leaves, straw and seeds. As well, there were sponge painting with spring colour! 

"I will do the stems and you will paint the flowers!"

"We would like to add pink and purple flowers."

Here is our wonderful co-creation ! 

Art - Whose Gloves Are These ?

"How We Organize Ourselves" 
Central Idea: The work people perform helps build community
Lines of Inquiry:

• The jobs people do in our community support its development (function)
• We take on roles each day and this helps us build a strong community (responsibility)

This Friday morning, we had a wonderful walk in our neighbourhood to look for community helpers. The children saw some construction workers building a house, a dog walker and a mail box where mail carriers collect letter.

As an inspiration for art activity today, we read the book "Whose Gloves Are These?" by Laura Salas. The children learned how some community helpers need special gloves to work. In the discussion during story time, the children shared their thoughts about what would happen without a certain community helper's service. 
Trystan - "we would have no animal to see in a zoo if there were no zookeepers."
Matthew - "Hotel rooms would be so messy if there were no housekeepers."
As well, we found that some of our duties at home are similar to the community helpers'. 
Brendan - "I help picking up dog poo."
Francine - "I set up the table at home."
Cameron - "I clean up my toys."
We are all responsible community helpers at home!

After the story and discussion, the children had a hand-on art activity to express their own ideas. 

Trace our hands!

Colour or glue tissue paper to decorate the gloves.

Here are our community helpers' gloves!

Art - Shapes in a Fire Truck

"How We Organize Ourselves" 
Central Idea: The work people perform helps build community
Having started with the book, "Clothesline Clues to Jobs People Do" by Kathryn Heling, the children had a guessing game about what jobs people do through observing people's uniforms and tools. It was amazing to hear our children have such rich language about occupation.

Cameron - People who fix cars are called mechanics.
Trystan - Painters are like artists.
Bela, Francine and Max - Milkman is one kind of farmer. (We learned the word, dairy farmer!)

As the children are expressing a strong interest in firefighters. We decided to follow the children's interests and needs to explore more upon the topic.

Before we used different shapes to make a firetruck collage, the children played a shape I spy game as a review of their shapes. With a picture of a fire truck, the children named out the shapes they would need for their fire trucks. Gluing and placing each part of a fire truck into the right position, the children were capable of forming the structure of a fire truck. Moreover, many children had discussions about how firefighters put out fires and save people in a community.

"The ladder needs some steps! "

"Look, these are the wheels on my fire truck. Can you see a hose?"

It was very nice and rewarding to watching the children fully engaged and participated the art activity. Their bright eyes were telling us how much they enjoyed this activity. There will be more extended activities for the children to explore what does a fire fighter do and what other community helpers we have.

Art - Pictures of Our Community

"What do you know about the word - community?" the children were asked. Some of the children have heard the word, community; here are their ideas about community:
Mila: cute babies
Trystan: people
Grace: houses
Damon: lights
Roy: cakes and sprinkles!
Then, Trystan wondered "What is community?" It was actually one of the provocations for our next unit of inquiries - "How We Organize Ourselves" 
Central Idea: The work people perform helps build community

This Friday, we had a hand-on art activity to help us accessing what the children know about a community. The children used stamps (made of wooden blocks and string) and paint to build their community scene.  

"Slide and swing in my community!"

"Cakes! we need bakery."

"My House ."

"What do we have in our community?"

"I want blue buildings."

Here are the image of the community that the children made on Friday!

Art - Inventions

Transdisciplinary Theme: Where we are in place and time

Central Idea: There are similarities and differences between the way people lived long ago and the way people live today.

• Inventions have been made that impact the things we do
• changes in daily life

This Friday, we explored what an invention means for our art activity. Here is the clip of the book "I am inventing an invention" by Grosset & Dunlap and Hill, Samantha. In the video, the children discussed about how peopled live in the olden days with the inventions we have nowadays. 

After we watched the video, the children were asked "how do you become an inventor?" 

Mila -"we decorate."

Cameron - "we can build things!"

Damon - "you need to be fast!"

Then, we had an hands-on art activity to make an invention plan. An open-ended free collage helped the children to have a visualization of their ideas on a piece of paper.  

Being a good communicator, the children verbalized their invention ideas with the teacher and their friends.

"What is this part?"

"My invention is a pen that would follow my to school!"

This is a bike that has a vacuum at the back!

This is my art work!

It was interesting to see that many children adding new functions to the items that they were familiar to make their inventions.