Australia Theme

                      

School has been busy as ever.  I am looking forward to a bit of a break after Valentine's Day.  We have just finished off a social studies unit on Australia.  What a great country to study!  The uniqueness of it adds to the interest.  Being a continent, island, and country in itself was a great lesson to my students.  They have been introduced to these concepts and to all the facts that make for a very interesting study!

When putting together a unit study my first stop is always the school library.  Here are some of the books I found and used.

Story books 

 Books by Mem Fox -- One of my favourite authors and she's from Australia. 

Early chapter books and step-by-step drawing books.

Non-fiction books.

 and of course we made a book -- A is for Australia, an acrostic poem.

Uluru Rock came in central on this page of amazing animals by one of my first graders.

Paintings of the Coral Reef.  

We started with finger-painting a blue background. Then we added yellow paint to the top and red to the bottom and mixed them with the blue to make green and purple for the hues of the sea.  The students used their thumb print for the school of fish and added sea plants in yellow.  This was a nice activity that was successful for all students.

 Aborigine Dot Art

The Australian animal was drawn on black paper, cut out, and then decorated with different sized dots in metallic tempera paints.  We also made boomerangs, but some things make it home faster than others.  I never got a picture.

Animal Non-fiction stories.

You-tube is a great source of information.

Great Barrier Reef Video -- my students just love this one.  We are watching it a little at a time as we find a few minutes.

My students' all time favourite song!

...and my favourite Australian collection!

If you will be studying Australia, here is a link to my pinterest board.

My Australia Pinterest Board

Winter Wonderland

I know this sounds cliched, but we really are living in a winter wonderland.  Our area has been seeing a lot of heavy fog lately.  Hoarfrost is formed on everything!

I caught these photos as the sun was setting coming home from school last week.  By the time I got inside the sun had disappeared.

My sister's backyard

The rays from the setting sun beakoned me to explore.  I will admit, I have not done alot of walking this winter.  Somehow, even though I think it isn't THAT cold, I find I just don't want to go out.  Not good!

Trees are weighed down with the frost.  Thankfully I got our cedar wrapped after the first big frost threatened to snap the fragile branches.

Home

I finally got some window stars made.  Our tattered old star was discarded last year so I had no choice but to get creative.  I really like these five point stars.  I made two large and a small one for the string of lights.  They have a wonderful effect in the bay window and I almost like them more during the day when there is hardly light showing through the frosty paper.

School's out and I am so ready for a break... not quite for Christmas though.

Winter Birds

Winter is here.  I know; not technically, but never-the-less, we are freezing so that means only one thing --stay indoors!  It is pretty difficult these days to muster up the strength and enthusiasm for a brisk walk.  That leaves only one way to enjoy the beauty of nature -- from the window.  And I have been doing a lot of watching these last few weeks!

Nuthatch

We have a variety of bird feeders set up in our yard. Consequently we get a variety of birds.  I have even seen some new ones -- male and female pine grosbeaks!  The male of these birds are an eye-catching red, not quite as brilliant as a cardinal.  This prompted my mom one day to excitedly call my dad to come see the tree full of cardinals!

Pine Grosbeaks

Also seen these last few weeks have been these birds: red polls, nut hatches, a magpie!! (at our feeders!!),

Magpie!

downy and hairy wood peckers, chickadees, blue-jays, and of course the common sparrow.

Hairy Woodpecker

As I mentioned before, this is window viewing, so some of my pics are taken through a window.  Sometimes I am lucky enough to open the door without a loud squeak to frighten away the bunch.

Downy Woodpecker

Chickadee

These have adopted our yard. They are everywhere!   Tomorrow my class will make a treat for the birds in their yard.  This is always a much enjoyed and appreciated activity.

Soil Wordle

Our first science unit of the year is coming to an end.  We started with a unit on soil in the environment.  This has been a great study, for me and the students.  We now have a compost bin in the trees by the school.  A bit late in the year to start with, but it will be a good learning experiment anyway.

We did an art piece on the components in soil. I put the students in groups and had them come up with things we find in soil.  We then gathered in front of the SMARTboard and they read their list as I typed them into the wordle generator.  The great thing about the generator is that if you enter repeats, the word increases in size. We then picked the style and colour we wanted.  Earth tones, of course, worked really well for this.  One of the kids was quick to notice that earthworm came out in an earth-wormy kind of colour!

After making the wordle, they each drew and coloured in crayon the items on the list.  We then gave the drawing a black paint wash.  They turned out well.

I kept the rocks part of the unit back as we would like to take a field trip to the rock pit at Souris.  Now all we need is for the sun to shine again!

Pumpkin Time

Today was our much anticipated pumpkin day at school.  After the first hard frost we were invited to the pumpkin patch and every child got to pick their own pumpkin.  They had fun and each knew what they were looking for; size, colour, or shape were important to individual students.

We started our day with reading a selection of books from our pumpkin collection.

Next we measured and recorded the height of our pumpkin, counted the lines, and drew it.  Then we got to see if the pumpkin floated or sunk.  This is always a surprise to the students!

Then we had a step by step drawing lesson. Everyone enjoyed this and everyone was successful!  Our first attempt was done in our sketchbooks, then we got heavier paper, drew it again, traced with a fall coloured sharpie, and water-colour painted it.

Finally we cleaned our pumpkins and carved them!  Most of the students were able to carve their own.  I wouldn't have trusted them, but this is a group with many boys and they all have treasured pocket knifes that are used for a variety of tasks including sharpening arrows and skinning branches!

Crude, but effective; and well-loved too!

Proud as punch!

After dinner we finished cleaning up and then enjoyed a few more of our pumpkin stories.  While the grades two and three students practiced a reader's theater on pumpkins, the grade ones finished their paintings.

As the paintings dried we watched The Berenstain Bears - The Prize Pumpkin found here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vCKstWtfJg&feature=player_embedded&safe=active

Lastly our pumpkin paintings were cut out, labeled and displayed with our back-to-school scarecrows.  This was a fun day for us all!  Next up -- Apple Day!

Yellow Warblers

A pair of yellow warblers decided that our scrawny thunder-child flowering crab would be a fine place to build their nest.  Sitting in our living room one windy rainy evening, I was amazed that a yellow bird, goldfinch, I though, was actually starting to build a nest in the tree as I was looking on.  Back and forth it flew, from a large evergreen back to this tree, collecting spider web and grass and industriously working at making the stuff stay together on little more than a fork in the tree.  "Good luck", I thought.  After this evening, this wouldn't sound like such a good idea anymore.

Well, the bird did come back and pretty soon there was the neatest little nest in full eye-view from our window, if you happened to know it was there.  It has been quite interesting watching the progression, from a shy squirmish bird to not noticing us there at all, from eggs to these hatchlings cooling off in the heat.

These birds grew amazingly fast, from feathery down to soft feathers in like three days.  Soon the nest spilled over with these tiny birds, and they are tiny, about a quarter sized now and managing to fly a few feet to a tree when we try to put them back in the nest after dropping out.

 On Sunday, a misty rainy day, they decided to move out!  The nest was just too small to hold the lot.

 We wouldn't have noticed them around if not for the fussy parents trying to ward us off with broken wing antics.

This little guy seems to like the ground.  We put him in the tree and there he was, back on the ground again.

These fledglings are the sweetest things, you can't help but want to hold them when you see them.  They are still around, hiding in the shrubs under the windows.  It will be nice to see them safely fly off on their own.

Field's Trip

I am sitting in a classroom and the only sounds I hear are the wind blowing and a lawnmower in the distance.  This is a rare day indeed -- the first one this term where I get the school to myself.  Granted, I had my kindies this morning.  They didn't get to go on the much anticipated field's trip to Winnipeg.  There are seven of them.  That is too many five-year-olds to keep an eye on, the trip to Winnipeg too long and who knows how kindergartners will sit through a few Imax movies. 


It was the parents' decision to keep them home.  They will get a local fun trip some time this week.


I took the opportunity of having them alone and did an art project which we have been waiting to try -- Plasticine art  by Barbara Reid.  She has a series of great videos and written instructions of her techniques on her website.  There is also a gallery of student art to view which my students enjoyed immensely.  


So here are our master-pieces!  I must say I expected to work a few days on these, but this is kindergarten...and we just DO!

Now, I must get back to work.  I have started on end-of-year clean-up.  I know I should do reports, but I find I work better in a cleaner environment!

Cedar Waxwing basking in the evening sun