Snow Creatures

Students created depth by making snow creatures in various sizes and placing them in the foreground, middle ground and back ground.  The students also experimented with negative space to make the snow creatures against a painted background.

Patterns In Islamic Art

We had the pleasure of touring and doing a workshop at the Aga Khan Museum.  Students looked for geometric, animal, floral and calligraphy patterns in the artifacts from the Islamic culture.

Examples of floral and geometric patterns.

Students recorded examples of different patterns in this marble fountain.

Our guide explained the calligraphy patterns in the tiles.

In the museum classroom, students designed their own tile using their research to guide them.

Students created patterns on their own clay tile using techniques demonstrated by the museum staff.

After lunch, students had a chance to enjoy the beautiful grounds of the museum.

Winter Mural

We created a mural of our neighbourhood for Kindness and Caring month.  Here are some details from our mural:

Kindness apartments.

Skating in the park with friends.

Sharing and helping others,

Looking after our environment.

Gingerbread Cookies

We combined math with baking today and made gingerbread cookies.  First we had to decide how to divide the dough evenly into 24 pieces and then we had to make irregular polygon-shaped cookies.  After we baked them we decorated them using icing sugar and candies.  Yum!

We shaped the dough on parchment paper which was then lifted onto the cookie sheets for baking.

After baking, each student had a small plastic bag with 20g of white icing.  We snipped the corner off the bag and piped it onto the cookies.  Then we added lots of yummy candies.

Each student's cookies were unique. They could eat them at once or take them home in a paper bag to share with family.

 I made the dough the day before and refrigerated it over-night.

This is the recipe and it makes 24 large cookies.
Bake 325 degrees F oven for 10 - 15 minutes until golden.

3/4 cup soft butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup molasses
Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Add the egg and molasses and mix well.

In a separate bowl, mix:
4 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt

Add dry ingredients to the bowl of wet ingredients and mix.  Knead the dough until it makes a ball.  Wrap it in parchment paper and refrigerate it for at least 2 hours.

Dragons With Personality

After reading The Fire Within we created personal dragons to reflect our personalities.  The dragons are made from sculpting plasticine clay onto empty CD cases.

Equivalent Fraction Pizzas

The students drew two pizzas and cut them into different numbers of slices but each pizza had to have the same amount of toppings. The students then recorded the amounts for each topping as equivalent fractions.