Friday, April 18, 2014

Problem with your car 's headlights? no problem, our 5th and 6th graders know how to fix them!

How do the Headlights of a car turn on when turning the switch ?
In order to answer this question, students of 5th and 6th grade had to build a model of a car. They installed a circuit that would turn on the lightbulbs when turning a switch. All of them did a great job and produced a car with two headlights.




Apprentissage du découpage en PS

The Petite Section students are learning how to handle scissors properly and use them to cut. They started by cutting play dough "carrots" and "cakes" for our stuffed animals. They were very focused and very proud of the result!






Experience sur le temps



In the discovering the world, the 2nd graders experimented on the passage of time. To measure it, they used a chronometer.  The questions were: what can you draw in 1 minute, 3 minutes and 8 minutes.
The conclusion made by the students was that the quantity of details increases with time.








Science – States of Waters

Students of Grade 5 and 6 enjoyed the first days of spring and did Science class outside. They are studying the different states of water and enjoyed experimenting with the last pieces of snow..


… now they are almost all melted... (thank goodness!)

Greek mosaics 6e / cm2

Inspired by photographs of a Roman mosaic floor from the archaeological site in Saint-Romain-en-Gal, we tried to work with salt dough and different grains to create mosaic illustrations for several famous Greek myths. We sprayed the finished work with clear varnish. Then we went to preschoolers' class (Grand Section) and made a presentation of our work, telling stories and showing pictures of Ancient Greek deities.








Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich CP-CE1

In art class we continued working with geometrical shapes. We discovered the suprematism of Malevich. We talked about the meaning of the unique style of this famous Russian painter. Suprematism was an art movement of one artist. We worked on reproducing Malevich's compositions in the form of collages. The goal was to master the use of a ruler, a square, and a compass to draw basic geometric forms. Students also advanced in expressing their observations. It is not an easy task to put things together when it comes to Malevich!




Le Rallye Maths

This year once again, students in grades 3, 4 and 5 participated in the Math competition “Rallye Maths”. The students had fun working together and were challenged by the Math Problems.  They learned to discuss their answers and made sure to double-check their results before playing their jokers for extra points.



                                           Great job!

Histoire à Quatre Voix








The 3rd graders studied the wonderful Histoire à Quatre Voix, by Anthony Browne. It tells the story of a promenade in a park, told by the 4 main characters: a mom and her son Charles and a dad and his daughter Réglisse. They go to the park with their dogs, Victoria and Albert. Through the different voices, we explored the characters' feelings and the impact of that promenade on their lives.
As a style exercise, the students chose either Albert or Victoria and had to retell the story from their perspective.
Anthony Browne's universe and illustrations are very colorful, charged with symbolism and references to famous artists. We hunted for those references and the students used some of the recurrent elements on the illustrations they made for their story.
You can see their work in the hallway. Enjoy!

Le château et le soleil de Paul Klee par les Cp et Ce1

Paul Klee, a Swedish painter, was well known for using mainly geometric forms with large blocks of color. In the beginning his parents encouraged the development of his musical skills, though in his teen years he decided to focus on becoming an artist. He studied extensively and wrote about color theory. In class we were inspired by his work "Le château et le Soleil". We advanced our knowledge of color theory by defining cool and warm colors on the color wheel. The assignment was to create a variation of Paul Klee's castle using cool or warm palette. Rulers and compasses were used as tools to trace geometric forms.





La plus grande carotte du monde



 La plus grande carotte du monde: in reading, the CM1 worked on a short story about the biggest carrot in the whole world.  The assignment was to create 3 different epilogues. The students all imagined their own end and illustrated it. The results were extremely different and amusing. Check them out in the hallway!





Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Vassily Kandinsky, a famous Russian abstractionist of the 20th century, was well known for linking the painting process to the one of orchestrating a musical composition. Inspired by his Improvisations and Compositions, we listened to an ex cert of Wagner's opera, "Lohengrin" and created our own visions of the music we heard.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Le cirque

After observing a variety of art works in connection to the circus students had to do a guided research on-line in order to present a brief analysis of one of them. Then they had to create their own work of art, reflecting on experience with Marion and Farid, the performers who visited with "Le tour du cirque" and their personal knowledge of circus.