Winter Silhoutte Art

We have gotten so many compliments on our winter silhouette art. The kids did an amazing job recreating images from the book Hopper by Marcus Pfister through a variety of watercolour techniques. Aren't they beautiful?

We used plastic wrap on the blue water colour to provide an icy texture, and salt in the sky to make crystals like snow! 

The students then used textured paint (acrylic and flour) to fill the animal stencils. 

All About Everett

We had a wonderful opportunity to listen to Everett share his All About Me book today. Did you know that his favourite song is "Black Betty" and that he knows his whole phone number? Wow! We were very excited to see his special guest Lulu which gave us a great hands on way to talk about dog safety with a very polite role model :)

Thank you to Linda for bringing Everett's special guest and working so hard with  him on his special book! 

Snowman Art

We used puffy paint to make snowmen today. We linked this to informational writing and following step by step instructions with the Vera Trembach book, "Make a Snowman". Check out our first two steps:

1) Mix together shaving cream and glue

2) Make the snowman's body

Stay tuned for step 3!

What is in snow?

Despite my sharing my thoughts on eating snow, I have seen the kids face first eating it while they pretend to be puppies outside. I wanted to show them exactly what was in snow, so we did a mini experiment. We collected snow from 3 places.

We waited for the snow to melt, and to our surprise, we found many yucky things in all three samples including rocks, scum, unknown floating particles and even hair! Yuck! 

We talked about drinking from outdoor water sources and how important it is to only drink or eat known foods from our parents so that we can be safe. 

Rescue the Ice Cube!

How can you get an ice cube out of a glass of water using only string and salt? The PreK/K were stumped. We learned that salt melts ice-- the kids made some great connections to salt trucks and the blue crystals that you sometimes see on stairs. By resting the string on the ice cube and pouring salt on it, the ice cube melts a little and re-freezes over the string! After a few tries, we were able to rescue the ice cube!

Painting with Ice

We continued our exploration of senses in winter with tough. The kindergarteners said that snow feels smooth, fluffy and cold! We used our winter colours (in a tempera powder paint) and cold ice to paint after.

Sing along to those crazy phonic songs with this video!

As requested by a few parents, wondering what the heck their children have been singing about, here is the link to our jolly phonics songs :) 

http://youtu.be/X2YAqhzaheE