Saturday 20 December 2008

The school year is finished!

Well we've finally finished school for the year! We've taken down all our wall displays, packed up the furniture and farewelled the kids and several staff members. Before we took down all the wall displays I actually remembered to get a photo of one of my favourites for the year! (Actually we'd already started to take it down before I remembered so not all of the panels made it into the photo!)
We made a 'classroom quilt' as a combined art, maths and writing unit. It was a steep learning curve for some of the kids!!! They each made their own section of the quilt and in the four corners the writing starts off:
  1. People say that I am...
  2. In the future I might...
  3. Three of my favourite things...
  4. The best things about being ME right now are...

Then they did their background art using a scrapbooking technique using oil pastels and baby oil... super fun to see how they turned out! Next they stitched all around their backgrounds and finally we added their photos and names.

The kids really weren't sure how it was going to turn out... and even asking them to have some faith in 'Whaea' didn't instill confidence in some of them lol BUT they were all really blown away with the final result - and so was I!!!


Watching some of my 'tough' boys trying to thread needles was quite interesting... the level of concentration was high!! The kids all loved doing this so I'm pretty sure it will appear in my planner again :)

Our class also farewelled Matua Nick this week which was quite sad. I did get busy last weekend though and created him a canvas! Nick's wife is a graphic artist and a scrapbooker so I knew that art was a big thing for them!

DEFINITELY the reaction I was hoping for!!!

The canvas is an 8x8 so it was super cute to work on those dimensions! Nick's favourite colours are blue and silver so I did some background painting techniques involving colour washing and then highlighted the edges in silver. The chipboard letters got a coat of paint and then I stamped them with silver using a crackle stamp and then added some dimensional magic to make them shine.

Now that school's finished I'll be able to get back into my scrap room and do all the projects that are flying around in my head!! And with Scrapfest coming in a few weeks, the timing couldn't be more perfect :)

Good luck with all your last minute Christmas preparations and happy scrapping!!

Friday 12 December 2008

My 'big' kids

Well the end of the school year is almost here... only 3 1/2 more days to go!

Yesterday we had our Year 6 leaving ceremony and it was a really lovely afternoon... I even managed to do my farewell speech without any tears!! The funniest part was the kids reactions to me all dressed up because I NEVER wear skirts but I bought one especially for the ceremony. I even had one of my Year 5's offer to be my 'date' lol

After the ceremony I got Mikayla to take a photo of me and Matua Nick (my teacher aide) with most of our Year 6's. Here's my 'big kids':
And here's a photo of me and Nick. He's got his teacher's college interview on Monday morning so I'm wishing him all the best because he's going to be a great teacher :)
Next Thursday I will be farewelling half my class as they head off to Intermediate. It's been a rough year at times but somehow all of a sudden the end of the year has arrived and it's going to be quite sad to think of some of them not coming back.

On the positive side, the VERY postive side!, it's almost time for the school holidays and I'm totally looking forward to it! I hope you're all enjoying your end of year social functions as much as me :)