Necklaces to Remember by!

The Primary students are following the Junior/Intermediate students by doing some bead work. For example the Junior Intermediate Students learned to create pumpkin zipper pulls. Take a look!

By Maninder and Kimberly

I taught Maninder and Kim on a one-to-one basis to tie a knot to hold the stainless steel hook in the middle of the wire,  to follow a pattern, to thread beads in order according to the pattern, to manage the beads in each of thier respective lines all together and to create a support along the back using masking tape. And voila a zipper pull is created!


After I showed some of the Primary students how to thread beads and to tie a knot they created these fantastic necklaces!

Beaded necklace created by Benedict

Beaded necklace by Joshua and Natalie (not shown)

Daffodils Does It!

The Primary students at Sommerville created Daffodils to go along with the Spring Lillies on our display board. I taught the students to learn by experiential learning on how to insert the bottom of the daffodil stem into the end of a straw where the stem was too wide for the straw. It was interesting. Some students curled the stem of the daffodils while others bent the stem in various ways by folding the paper this way and that. After I demonstrated how to fold the stem exactly in half it would easily fit into the end of the straw they tried to fold the stem but they learned that when they folded it exactly in half down the length of the stem it would work. Then the element of surprise overcame them when something that seems so simple became an exercise in problem solving.

By Benjamin, Hayden, Bhavya, Benedict

Welcoming Spring!

The idea that came along with these colouring pages was that we welcome Spring and do the spring cleaning then the flowers and butterflies come out. The other colouring pages were of a Bunny sweeping and another one of flowers and butterflies.

By Benedict

By Benjamin

By Jefferson, Daniel, Andrei, and Bhavya

I am currently teaching the JK and SK students to stay within the lines while colouring by using the lines as guidelines of where they should put the colour. Jefferson seems to be the student who has progressed the most. He used to put colour arbitrarily over the entire page no matter what the image was on the page. Now that I've taught him to stay within the same area with the same colour he uses the crayon/pencil crayon to colour in blocks of colour staying in the vicinity of a shape of an image on the colouring page. Hurray!!

Spring has Sprung!!!

The primary students at Sommerville have been busy creating beautiful Spring lillies. Take a look!

Hayden, Natalie, Jefferson, and Bhavya created these.

I successfully taught the primary students to draw an outline of their hand on white paper and then to cut it out. Then I demonstrated by using a pencil to curl the paper back they would learn to create lovely petals, then I showed them how to wrap it around a green straw that was to be the stem. Then I showed them how to add pipe cleander to the middle, unfortunately it is black instead of yellow because that is all we had. And voila! The end result was that the students learned to create a lovely lily.

From 'Life as an Educator'

Here is an excerpt from Justine Tarte’s blog http://justintarte.blogspot.com/  that I have found very enlightening and I wanted to share it with you:

With a "fixed" mindset, your intelligence is static, with a "growth" mindset, your intelligence can be developed...

A fixed mindset avoids challenges, while a growth mindset embraces challenges...

A fixed mindset gets defensive or gives up easily, while a growth mindset persists in the face of adversity...

A fixed mindset sees effort as fruitless or worse, while a growth mindset sees effort as a path toward mastery...

A fixed mindset ignores useful negative feedback, while a growth mindset learns from criticism...

A fixed mindset feels threatened by the success of others, while a growth mindset finds lessons and inspiration from the success of others...

A fixed mindset will plateau early and achieve less than their full potential, while a growth mindset will reach ever-higher levels of success...

Seeking Support

Hi!

If you have been following my blog or have viewed anything on my blog I am requesting some feedback. I would like some support on my blog posts, articles, links etc so if you can forward any of your comments to me at karenanddan@rogers.com I would appreciate it. Thank you in advance!

Back with a Blast!!!

The students from Sommerville Manor were back in action this week after a terrific March Break. This is an example of what a student in the Before School Programme was up to this morning, making a birthday card for her friend!

Bird House to bring the birds back for an early Spring!

Here are a couple of creative bird houses that the Junior-Intermediate students made out of a milk carton, a wooden dowel, tin foil, string and cardboard.

Bird houses by Kimberly and Brian!