Program Reports

Here are some excerpts from the teacher’s program reports




The 2’s



Your two’s engage mainly in parallel play – enjoying the company of a mate nearby, all

the while unravelling their own storyline. One of the many joys as a teacher is to become

a catalyst for shared experiences.

The other day when our mountain was out on the carpet, the children were each

engrossed in their own world, when I sat down and started to chat with one child who

was attempting to put a large elephant into the small hole of the volcano. He kept trying

to stuff it in – he looked at me – I looked at him and with my arms extended I said, “The

elephant is too big.” “Too big!” he repeated. “Can you find a smaller animal to put down

the hole?” I asked and made a tiny gesture with my two fingers. “Smaller animal,”

he repeated – he found a little monkey and put it down the hole and it slid all the way

down and fell out the other end. “You did it!” I responded. “I did it!” he said. All this

excitement was not lost on the others nearby. A group gathered round the volcano and

with some gentle encouragement for turn-taking – every child had an opportunity to see

whether the animal they picked up would be “just right” or “too big” to fit in the volcano.

Each attempt was followed by clapping for success or laughter and a scramble for a

smaller animal when it just wouldn’t fit. This was truly a rich and wonderful learning

moment.







The 3’s



Our weekly themes in September were Back to School, All About Me, and Fall. For our Thanksgiving week the children experienced cornmeal in the sensory table, smelled nutmeg on their paper pies, and talked about what they were thankful for ( family, playing, and toys). For our Fire Safety week we pretended to be fire fighters in our dramatic play area, and we explained and practised our fire drill. During Nursery Rhyme week we shared rhymes and recited favourites, and we all took turns being nimble and quick and jumping over the candlestick. As part of our Transportation theme, the children were each given a boarding pass and pretended going through airport security, boarding a plane, and travelling in an airplane. As part of our lead-up to Hallowe’en, our dramatic play area was filled with costumes to try on and assume a new identity.





CA Kindergarten



Art is...

painting, drawing, pasting and sculpting. It is sewing and building, colouring and folding. It is expressing and observing.

Art is getting something that is inside you to the outside.

We have begun our year in art going through the 7 elements of art: line, shape, colour, value, texture, form and space.

All of these elements are in everything we would like the children to experience in our program and we will use these elements in the styles of famous works as well and help the children recognize them throughout their exploration in these creative endeavours.

We explored the element of line by painting different types of lines with black paint on white paper and white paint on black paper. How can we use line in sculpture? Get some sticks and start by wrapping them around to create a lovely lawn ornament and we gave the children a paper with 2 lines already drawn across the page and they turned it into whatever they saw within those lines and this created a wonderful dialogue about our individuality and why everyone saw something slightly different.

When exploring shape the children cut and paste Geometric shapes that were already very familiar to them and created a scene using those shapes. (several lines put together made a shape....who knew?) They then explored more organic shapes or shapes that are seen in nature by creating the lovely sheep that are still gracing our bulletin boards as well as shading around rectangles and squares to create a night time city scape.



CA After School



This year in our Creative Arts After School Program we have been following the history of art.

Following a loose timeline we started the year off exploring prehistoric art (cave drawings and paint made from organic ingredients), and then moved on to Aboriginal art. With a focus on the Pacific Northwest Peoples and the Inuit; we looked at the strong presence of line and symmetry in their works. The students produced their own papier mache masks of animals and supernatural beings.

Clay sculpture kept our theme going as we continued to look at what inspired these artists from the past. It has been interesting to note that all peoples past and present look to nature/their environment, animals, the supernatural and ancestry as subjects for art. With the Egyptians these ideas continued with a heavier influence on the supernatural/gods and ancestors. The children drew their own interpretations of Egyptian pharaohs and people.

It is already the end of October and we’ve finished this month off with Ancient Greek Art. A collage inspired by the appreciation of beauty in Ancient Greece and an exercise of balance and proportion in architecture, have been our recent projects. November will continue with art inspired by portraiture and mosaics from the Romans.