Experimenting with Posting from my Phone

Hi, Everyone, As I was reading Alex's blog about having children make Christmas ornaments to take home, I remembered the invaluable pom pom fork strategy. When my class chose the Alaskan malamute as their mascot and named themselves the Husky Team, we made husky face ornaments out of 7 black and white fork pom poms, two googly eyes, a tiny plastic nose, a red ribbon tongue, and a red ribbon at the neck. Also a gold looped thread to hang it on the tree. 5 pom poms were glued on the dog face background of black felt, basically an oval with ears at the top, then two more on top for the cheeks...wish I had a photo to post but I haven't unpacked my ornaments yet! But the magic of fork pom poms is that they can be made with scraps of yarn donated by children's crafty relatives and they can be put to so many uses in various crafts or kid creations. I used to have children put a short piece of yarn to tie the pom pom through the middle of the fork first, and then weave the yarn in and out of the tines until the fork was full before having someone - a partner - tie the knot tightly as they slid the woven yarn off the fork. None of the websites I visited tonight suggest the weaving - people just wrap the yarn several times around the fork. I wonder if kids would find it hard to tie that way? I guess it depends on the age and dexterity of the kids. Also, we didn't cut the loops, as in these instructions, and our pom poms looked fine. I found was that once children had mastered this little skill, they were quite proud of themselves and wanted to make more!

I hope the extension for blogs was helpful. The due date has now passed and so I am going to begin my final assessment and grading of your blogs today. I hope you will leave your blogs up, though, until the end of January, when your B.Ed. courses are complete, or at least until the start of classes in the new year. Other years, some students have browsed the blogs a bit more over the holidays, just gathering more teaching ideas and staying in touch with their classmates. Thanks for all the thought you've put into them and also for the many beautiful images and inspiring lesson activities that you shared. I will write a final comment here when I have finished with all of them. I am grateful to be able to do this from Saskatchewan - I was able to avoid the snowstorm that was forecast for Alberta!

My own children and my students of various ages enjoyed making these cookies - putting them together is like playing with plasticene. Check out a YouTube video that includes a recipe and shows how! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up14UMtBnoI Sorry I couldn't get the video to link or to embed in this post but you can go to it quite easily if you cut and paste this URL into your browser. So...if you need a break from "school work" this weekend and especially if you have kids to enlist - make cookies together and blog about it!!! Guilt-free activity except for the calories.

Are you looking for ideas for blog posts? Here are a few you may not have thought of. If you notice that someone else has posted an interesting art of craft idea, try it yourself (for example, try making a 3D snowflake by following the instructions that I linked in my last post!. Then blog about your experience, with a photo of your creation if possible. As I mentioned in class, choose a section of your text book to read and post about - the Seed Strategy chapters are full of activity ideas that you can link to PLOs in your post. Many art galleries of the world also feature online tours - google and see what you can find to share - if I had time today, I would check out a Vincent Van Gogh tour from Amsterdam. To balance your interest in visual arts with performing arts, choose a dancer, actor, or musician to learn about online and feature - branch out from those you already know by searching broad topics, i.e. blues musicians, and choosing someone who is featured as new and promising or as a seasoned and recognized classic artist in that genre. And don't forget to blog about your participation in our Visual Art Show, as well as how your group worked together or what you learned in the presentations that we will enjoy on Tuesday. Just a few ideas to help you keep up your momentum!

Snowflake Craft and Decoration

Children love to create stunning displays in their own classroom or in the foyer of their school. Here are my favourite 3D snowflakes that I used in various ways over the years - I had forgotten how to make them but found out again with a quick internet search. These 3D paper snowflakes can be made in all different sizes and with various kinds of paper. After a little practice with plain paper, try it with two squares of metallic gift wrap, glued together so both sides are shiny!Click here for the instructions.

No Holiday Potluck and Performance this Year!

I am sorry that the decision has been made NOT to hold the annual potluck that has been a tradition in our B.Ed. Program for the past several years. I did not want to overwhelm you with Performance plans before your Practicum and the Art Show, but I was planning to show you, when we got back, how a whole school performance can be pulled together quite quickly, with small groups contributing from their strengths and from learning that has previously occurred, such as the Green Onions Hand Jive or the Step Sisters dance. Drama pieces around a theme can be inserted without endless rehearsing using Readers' Theatre or Poems for Two Voices. A possible title might have been "EY Rocks, Jingles, Claps and Stomps! We might have used "Dear Santa, I can Explain..." as a theme, with short vignettes or dialogues drawn from children's literature, as demonstrated in the mini-skits presented by the Drama Strength group. However, another key piece of learning that I hoped you would acquire in this course is that traditions and special events in schools must be flexible and decisions for each year must be made in response to current needs or priorities, for example, to protect learning time, manage scheduling difficulties,or to reduce workload or stress. So this year, we are sad not to have this special time to come together as a larger community. But I am also quite sure that at least some of you are relieved that the pressure of preparing a performance for your peers is off.If you are disappointed because you had a great vision or a role you hoped to play, please save all your good ideas - you'll need them when you are teaching and they will not go to waste! And one more thing about grading for 406 - we will move the "performance" emphasis in your blogs to our third assignment, with group presentations in our last class - I'll explain and demonstrate when we get back. Part of the 50% mark for your blog will now be on your thoughts about the classroom presentation for this third assignment rather than about your contribution to a Holiday Potluck Performance.