Explore the outdoors:

Comme un boomerang

Don't forget to visit the K-1 class blog for more amazing articles! (http://gscpefdm.blogspot.com/)

Le boomerang est à l'origine une arme de chasse des Aborigènes, les natifs d'Australie. Ils s'en servent également comme d'un instrument de musique, mais aujourd'hui, tout le monde connaît le boomerang comme un jeu de lancer.
Boomerangs are originally a hunting weapon of the Aborigine, the native people of Australia. They also use it as a musical instrument, but today everyone knows the boomerang as a throwing game.

Nous avons peint nos boomerangs avant de les décorer, avec des graphismes et des dessins d'animaux présents dans l'art aborigène, car on les trouve dans le bush, le nom de la savane en Australie et en Nouvelle-Zélande, ou dans l'océan.
We painted our boomerangs before decorating them, with shapes and animal drawings present in the Aborigine art because they are found in the bush, which is the name of the savannah in Australia and New Zealand, or in the ocean.

Nous avons peint des geckos, des tortues, des serpents ou des poissons. We painted geckos, turtles, snakes or fishes.

Tout le monde s'est bien appliqué car ce travail était très minutieux! Everyone took great care and did detailed work!

On aurait bien essayé de faire voler nos boomerangs, mais Yassine a préféré les suspendre pour décorer le couloir! We would have loved to try and make our boomerangs fly, but Yassine preferred to hang them to decorate the hall!

 

Les croix méxicaines de CE1 / CE2

Mexican cross, Peruvian or Cran Chaco cross... Decorative or magic according to traditions, with its vivid colors and symmetric forms, the Mexican cross brings to mind Native American art. Children of the 2nd and 3rd grade class had to find two strait sticks on the playground and learn a technique of weaving the wool yarn around the cross.

La motricité en maternelle

The preschool children have been working hard on their gross motor skills. You can see them on the photos practicing throwing balls into hoops and in the video they are doing a relay race! This is so much fun!

On s'amuse bien à la garderie!

Everyday, between 3:30PM and 5:30PM, children of all grades meet in afterschool care. They start with a little snack and then take advantage of their time in “garderie” to run, play, talk, draw, and do their homework…

It is a good time for the students to share games with friends of their class or with children of different age groups. According to the weather, aftercare is offered inside or outside on the playground.

Outside, the older children organize sports competitions for the younger ones, pull sleds, children play ball, play with trucks, build forts or fairy houses…

Inside, children make dinner in the play kitchen, play with cars, Legos, prepare meals out of play-doh, do puzzles, do collages and drawings, create puppet shows and they even dance sometimes!

This is so much fun that when mom and dad arrive, the children find it difficult to leave, they want to stay just a little bit longer or they go hide in hopes to stay at school all night!
Many thanks go to Philomene who has been running the garderie this year to the great pleasure of the children and parents!

Les jardins japonais

In art class CE1/CE2 students (grades 2-3) were introduced to the notion of a Japanese garden. First we have talked about its components and then we went outside to build our Japanese gardens. The available material consisted of rocks found during our outing at the Topsham quarry, sticks, branches, flowers, pine cones found in abundance in the woods, sand, water and plastic bags to build a pond. Here are the pictures of our marvelous creations: 

Le B2i: Brevet informatique et internet

In Technology Class, the 5th Graders are currently working hard in order to fulfill the requirements of the B2i école. In accordance with the French Curriculum, each student must demonstrate basic knowledge of the Internet and the use of the computer by the end of 5^th grade. The competencies are tested independently. They include typing skills, effective internet researching, and critical use of the internet . The students will receive diplomas upon completion. 

Geckos aborigènes

Don't forget to visit the K-1 class blog for more amazing articles! (http://gscpefdm.blogspot.com/)

L'art est très important dans la culture aborigène, lié à la terre et célébrant le "Temps du rêve", qui explique l'origine du monde et de l'Australie.
Il y a la musique, le mime, les costumes, la peinture, la sculpture...
Les éléments naturels sont beaucoup utilisés comme support de décor: écorce de bois, parois des grottes, sol, cailloux, coquillages... On y trouve souvent des représentations d'animaux comme le gecko, le serpent, le kangourou...
Art is very important to the Aborigine culture, linked to the earth and celebrating "The Time for dreams", which explains the origins of the world and Australia.
There is music, mime, costumes, painting, sculpture...
Natural elements are used a lot as support for decoration: bark, cave walls, ground, rocks, seashells... One often finds animal representations such as gecko, snake, kangaroo...

Après avoir lu un conte des origines et écouté la musique étonnante du didgeridoo, nous avons peint et décoré de gros galets et des coquillages.
After reading a story about the origins and listening to the astonishing music of the didgeridoo, we painted and decorated big pebbles and seashells.

Nous avons utilisé des peintures aux couleurs naturelles, comme l'ocre, le vert, le rouge, le marron, car les aborigènes utilisaient des matériaux colorés qu'ils trouvaient dans la nature pour décorer leurs créations: fruits, pierres, terre, feuilles...
We used natural colors of paint they find in nature, such as ochre, green, red, brown because the aborigines used colored materials to decorate their creations: fruits, stones, dirt, leaves...

 Nous avons ensuite peint des geckos sur nos pierres ou coquillages peints, et décoré l'ensemble avec des petits points de différentes couleurs.
We then painted geckos on our stones or seashells, and decorated everything with little dots of different colors.

C'était très intéressant de peindre sur ces nouveaux supports que l'on trouve dans la nature!
It was very interesting to paint on those new supports we find in nature!

The linguistic genius of babies

 

At TEDxRainier, Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another -- by listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.

Patricia Kuhl studies how we learn language as babies, looking at the ways our brains form around language acquisition.

Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl is the Bezos Family Foundation Endowed Chair for Early Childhood Learning, Co-Director of the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, Director of the NSF-funded Science of Learning Center, and Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences. She is internationally recognized for her research on early language and brain development, and studies that show how young children learn. Dr. Kuhl's work has played a major role in demonstrating how early exposure to language alters the brain. It has implications for critical periods in development, for bilingual education and reading readiness, for developmental disabilities involving language, and for research on computer understanding of speech. Dr. Kuhl is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Rodin Academy, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. She was awarded the Silver Medal of the Acoustical Society of America in 1997, and in 2005, the Kenneth Craik Research Award from Cambridge University. She received the University of Washington's Faculty Lectureship Award in 1998, and in the 2007, Dr. Kuhl was awarded the University of Minnesota's Outstanding Achievement Award. Dr. Kuhl is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Acoustical Society of America, the Cognitive Science Society and the American Psychological Society. In 2008 Dr. Kuhl was awarded the Gold Medal from Acoustical Society of America for her work on learning and the brain. In 2011 in Paris, she was awarded the IPSEN Fondation’s Jean-Louis Signoret Neuropsychology Prize.

Dr. Kuhl was one of six scientists invited to the White House in 1997 to make a presentation at President and Mrs. Clinton's Conference on "Early Learning and the Brain." In 2001, she was invited to make a presentation at President and Mrs. Bush's White House Summit on "Early Cognitive Development: Ready to Read, Ready to Learn." In 2000, she co-authored The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn (Morrow Press).

Dr. Kuhl's work has been widely covered by the media. She has appeared in the Discovery television series "The Baby Human"; the NOVA series "The Mind"; the "The Power of Ideas" on PBS; and "The Secret Life of the Brain," also on PBS. She has discussed her research findings on early learning and the brain at NBC's Education Nation, and on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, NHK, CNN, and in The New York Times, Time, and Newsweek.