Emily Carr

The story of Emily Carr was a sure way to inspire our class and connect our learning to our focus book The Tree in Me by Corinna Luyken. Despite being scoffed at by her older sisters for her desire to do her art, Emily Carr did not give up. Instead, she was true to herself and profoundly impacted the Canadian art scene. Like many of the Group of Seven artists, Emily’s work was inspired by Canada’s natural rugged world and indigenous landscapes of the west coast.

We created a thoughtful piece that used tints, shades, foreground, mid-ground, and background as a class. We also explored warm and cool colour theory. We spent some time thinking about the words, descriptions, and emotions associated with warm and cool colours. We discovered that warm colours are often associated with happy, joyful emotions. They are linked to sunshine, the daytime, and summer and autumn. Cool colors can be used to express sad, calm, and tranquil emotions. They can be linked to water, nighttime, and the winter months.

For the next two weeks, we will be focusing on our families and the importance of family traditions. As part of our classwork, please talk to your child about one of your favourite family traditions. It can be big or small. If possible, it would be fantastic if you can provide a picture for your child showing them participating in this tradition that they can bring into the classroom. All images will be returned safely by mid. January. Please send your photograph in by the 10th of December. If you only have a picture that can be emailed that would be fine too. My email is saharris@cbe.ab.ca

This week we will continue discussing and building on our story, The Most Magnificent Thing. To support our learning related to a growth mindset, we will investigate inventions that have occurred in the past due to failures. We will also be creating our own most magnificent thing using loose parts. The students brainstormed a list of items they would like to use. I have included the list below. If you have any of these items and are willing to donate to our class, we would love to bring them in by the following Monday. 

Wanted: Recycled material!!!!!

cardboard boxes

paper plates

cans

shoeboxes

large paper towel roles (please no toilet paper roles) 

string

wool

fabric

fancy paper

little boxes

pompoms

buttons

pipe-cleaners

popsicle sticks

bottle lids

corks

elastics

Ms. Serra will be videotaping the grade 2/3 class for our Virtual Holiday Performance on Friday, Dec. the 10th. This performance is called the Tree in Celebrations. She is asking students to dress in a festive way for the video. Any of these options are fine:

- festive holiday wear

-any clothing your child associates with a celebration 

-plain red, gree, black or white shirt ( if a shirt has a picture on the front we can turn it around )

Please let Ms. Serra know if you have any questions about this. Thank you so much for your support.