Exploring Artists

Vincent Van Gogh painted farmers and people who worked on the land in Holland, using dark colours to represent the gloominess of their labour. After moving to France, he began to paint using brighter colours, drawing the landscapes and using nature as an inspiration for his work. Painting at particular times of the day meant that he was reliant on the light available and so he started to paint using quick strokes, using thick paint so that people could feel his paintings. One of his most famous paintings is the "Starry Night."

To celebrate Vincent Van Gogh and his beautiful paintings, we made Vincent's Mixed-Up Soup.  If you would like to try to make this soup at home, please view the following recipe:

Ingredients:
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 medium-size onion, chopped
1/2 purple eggplant, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
1 zucchini, cut into bite-size pieces
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 (15.5 ounce) can of white kidney beans
1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 tbsp. Herbes de Provence
1/2 tsp. salt
1 (14 ounce) can vegetable broth
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:
1.  Add olive oil to the bottom of a large pot and warm over medium heat for 1 minute.
2.  Add onions, eggplant, zucchini and garlic.  Saute for 10 minutes, stirring often, until the onions are soft.
3.  Add the beans, tomatoes, Herbes de Provence, salt and broth to the pot.  If broth doesn't cover vegetables, add water.
4.  Turn up heat so that the soup boils, then lower it to a simmer.  Cover and cook for 30 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  The soup is ready when the eggplant is tender.
5.  Serve with French bread and butter for a delicious meal.

ENJOY!!!

Makes 4 servings

 

Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow, Russia on December 16, 1866. He grew up in Russia where he enjoyed music and learned to play the piano and the cello.  Both music and colours would have a huge impact on his art later in life. Kandinsky felt that he could express feelings and music through colours and shapes in his paintings. For example, he thought that yellow had the sound of a brass trumpet and that certain colours placed together could harmonize like chords on a piano. The shapes he was most interested in were the circle, triangle and the square. He thought the triangle would cause aggressive feelings, the square calm feelings, and the circle spiritual feelings.





 
 



Multicultural Day

 

 

Readers Retell Stories, Details and Main Ideas

We have been working on describing the setting (where the story takes place), characters, problem and solution in different stories, as well as retelling stories using words, such as "Beginning," "Middle" and "End."  We can also retell stories using the words "First," "Then," "Next," "After" and "Finally."

 

 

We made puppets and recreated the setting for "The Three Little Pigs."  We used Lego to build the trees, a cauldron with red, yellow and orange Legos for the fire, and a piece of felt for a blanket.  We used the puppets to retell the story using the words "Beginning," "Middle" and "End."

 

We practise retelling stories during our Morning Circle.  We used the words "First," "Then," "Next," "After" and "Finally" to retell "Three Little Pigs" and "Red Riding Hood."

 

 

 

We created a Story Map and drew pictures to retell the "Beginning," "Middle" and "End" of the story "The Hat" by Jan Brett

 

 

 

We LOVE the story "Pete The Cat:  My White Shoes."  We used props to reenact the story from the beginning to end.