Monday, February 24, 2020

Mustard Seed School: Day One



On Day One, we met at the Mustard Seed. Ms Kelsey, our Mustard Seed teacher, gave us a tour and told us the history of the Mustard Seed. We got to see the residence the Mustard Seed has, their rec room, the shared kitchen areas, and we watched a video to see what the rooms are like. The Mustard Seed has long-term rental housing. The students started thinking about what would be essential to have in a suite, such as a bed, dresser, desk, or bathroom. When we’re back at school next week, we will continue this project by designing an affordable housing room.


In the afternoon, we visited City Hall. We attended a City Council Meeting to see democracy in action! We learned about a proposed land change in Tuscany. Builders would like to build townhouses, so they need permission from the city to build there. We heard that they have measured how much traffic goes by each day, and they’ve engaged with community members so they are informed about the plan and have had the chance to make suggestions and ask questions. We were welcomed by the Ward 11 City Councilor, and got to stand up while the room applauded for us! J

Friday, February 21, 2020

Word Study 2

Here is the focus for this week's Word Study groups. 

You can help reinforce these concepts if you're reading aloud together and you see a word that follows the spelling pattern seen below. 

Check with your child to know which group they're in (they named the groups themselves!).

Troublemakers - endings (-ing) When a verb ends in two consonants, add -ing; when a verb ends in one consonant, double the final consonant then add -ing. Ex: stop becomes stopping; jump becomes jumping

Red Foxes - short and long o sounds Ex: drop; foam

No Namers - prefixes (pre-; fore-; post-; after-) Ex: previewforecast; meaning before postwar; afterthought meaning later

Thursday, February 20, 2020

HOMEWORK: Virtue Story Book Sharing


Moral Intelligence Reading Project

We have been learning about the 7 Virtues of Moral Intelligence in class. They are:

Kindness, Respect, Empathy, Conscience, Self-Control, Tolerance, Fairness

Students have been asked to choose a picture story book to read to the class.
They then need to explain which virtue it fits with and explain why they think that.

Please hand in a written copy of the virtue explanation to be used on a display that includes the book title and author.

Students will be assessed on:
-       Reading fluently
-       Speaking loudly and clearly; looking up at the audience; confidence when reading
-       Health connections between the story and one of the seven virtues


Students took home a slip of paper today with their presentation date on it. Presentations begin March 2. 

Reminder: Mustard Seed School next week

It's finally here! We will be going to Mustard Seed School every day next week (Feb 24-28).

Please ensure your child arrives on time every day and has a lunch, backpack, water bottle, and outdoor clothing.

We can't wait to share our learning with you!

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Emotional Vocabulary

Today we made emotion art.

We picked a letter. We picked an emotion, and then we did a watercolour wash. After that, we picked two colours and then we cut the circle out.

We also drew a face on the circle to match the emotion.

Our class did this activity because we are learning about emotions! We also practiced our drawing skills to prepare for our close-up animation drawing. We're learning how to make expressions more detailed and realistic.

Written By: Nikita and Priya!!!!


Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Animation: Day Two



Here's a sneak peek of what we learned today. We don't want to tell you too much because we want our final animations to be a surprise! :)

Making a boil: You draw 2-3 pictures of the same drawing then, when you take your animation, you switch them out every picture to make it look like it's flickering or moving. For example, a fire. The three images should look a little different but should all be the same size so they look similar.
By: Sophia and Jaxton

"We use boils to make boring things more interesting." ~ Nikita
"We use boils to make it interact and more realistic." ~ Isana
"We use boils to make more action in the film."
~ Priya

Making a smear: You can make one big drawing like one pair of eyes and you want their eyes to move to the opposite side of their head to show that they're looking the other way. So you can draw a squiggle, then put the eye on the other side. Or, you could make lots of pairs of eyes to give an effect that they're moving quickly.
By Desiree
"We use smears to show that a character is looking side to side quickly and it adds more animation." ~ Abby
"A smear is when something is moving very quickly because in an animation. In an animation, if you put something on one side of the page, then on the other side really quickly, it looks like it's teleporting. So if you make something longer, like an oval, it will look like it's actually moving, not teleporting." ~ Owen
"There's two different types of smears: one is a long stretched line, and the other is many of the object." ~ Charlotte
"Real life" example of Homer Simpson
Puppets: You need more than one section of a person or animal. Then, you use brads between the sections so that you can show a person walking or clapping. Brads are to make characters or props more detailed so they can move. It makes them articulated and realistic.
By: James and D

"We use puppets so you can make your drawing sit down without having to draw it all over." ~ Isla
"We use puppets to add detail. You have to do it really carefully so you don't rip it. You can make the character look like they're walking or swimming." ~ Chloe
"The point of using puppets is to not make it look like you're characters are teleporting. For example, an inch worm moves up and down so it doesn't look like it's teleporting across the page." ~ Priya

We also learned about wave loops and close-ups.

Here was an amazing animation we watched to inspire us to use the animation techniques we've learned. The drawings are so detailed!!!

Paper Planes (click here)

The Making of Paper Planes (click here)



How to View our Google Classroom

Hi Everyone, One last quick note from me: As per instructions, I have "Archived" our Google Classroom. You are still able to v...