Our latest art project was inspired by the book Dream Snow, written by Eric Carle. The book has beautiful illustrations and uses plastic overlays to add snow to many of the pictures.
We started by creating our backgrounds with shades of blue and purple and then painted our snowmen. We added details to our snowmen using the painted paper we created at the beginning of the year. Finally, we painted snow on overhead transparencies that we attached on top of our paintings.
We love how they turned out and we hope that we will get some real snow soon!
What wonderful wintery snowmen. I really like Eric Carle’s work the children have obviously enjoyed this art activity. I was wondering two things: firstly have you actually got snow? We haven’t so that is a little disappointing! Secondly have you ever tried making snow elephants? Great fun.
Happy New Year
Mr E
Dear Mr. E,
Thank you for leaving us a comment. Unfortunately, we don’t have any snow right now. This morning it was really icy though. When we got to school there was ice in our court and we could sort of skate in our shoes. We have only had a little bit of snow so far this year, but we hope there is more coming.
You have us wondering about snow elephants! We’ve made snow angels before, are snow elephants anything like that? Trista used to live in Northern Canada and she made a snow elephant with her brother. She curled up in a ball and Malcolm put snow on top of her. Then he put leaves for the ears and a stick for a trunk. Is that a snow elephant like you make?
We hope you get snow soon too!
Your friends,
Mrs. W and the 2/3s
What beautiful wintry artwork! Also, the music made me think of snowflakes falling.
Dear Kathryn (a.k.a Ana’s mom),
Thank you for leaving us such a nice comment. We’re so glad that you liked our artwork. We thought the music sounded nice too and it seemed to have made it snow for real!
Hoping for more snow,
Mrs. W and the 2/3s
Dear Mrs. W and the 2/3s,
I have always loved Eric Carle books. Our first graders do an author study on him and they do some awesome art work. I shared your blog with the first grade teachers, maybe they’ll try your idea. I teach 2nd grade at an international school in Tokyo. We are suppose to get snow this weekend. I know all the students will be excited. I love to see the snow too. When the weather is clear I can see Mt. Fuji from the outside stairway at school and from my balcony at home. It is covered with snow. I am looking forward to reading more on your blog and seeing what you are doing.
Mrs. Hino
Dear Mrs. Hino,
We were very excited to read your comment. We have never received a comment from Tokyo before. We found Tokyo on the map and also searched on the internet for pictures and some information about Mt. Fuji. What a beautiful view you must have!
Did you get any snow on the weekend? We had snow until Saturday, when it warmed up and started to rain. We hope that we will get more snow.
What is it like teaching in an international school? How many students are in your class? We have a very small class this year (just 13 students in grades 2 and 3).
We would love to learn more about you!
Mrs. W and the 2/3s
Dear Mrs. Watson’s class,
It snowed last night and we have a snow day today. There wasn’t a lot of snow, but the roads and sidewalks are very icy. Many of our students ride the train to school. The trains were running, but the administration was concerned about people slipping and getting hurt. I have posted some photos at this site. Teddy bears website,/a> Sorry I don’t know how to embed a photo in the comment. I’ll try to learn so I can send you a photo.
I teach at an international Christian school. I have 22 students in my second grade class. There are about 470 students in the school(K-12). I have been teaching here for 13 years. I have lived in Japan about 25 years. Our school was started for the children of missionaries, but we now have less children of missionaries. My class has one student from the Philippines, 2 Korean students, 1 from Hong Kong, 5 full Japanese, 1 Japanese adopted by foreigners, and 12 who are bicultural(1 parent is from one country and the other parent Japanese).
Presently we are studying about Jan Brett. We will be performing several of her stories as readers’ theater. We are studying graphing in math class. At recess the boys love to play soccer.
Looking forward to hearing from you again. Please let me know what you would like to know about Japan or our school and we’ll try to answer you.
Mrs. Hino
Dear Mrs. Hino,
Thank you for writing us back. We loved looking at the pictures you posted on the teddy bear site. You got about the same amount of snow as we did. The two ball snowman you saw was cute. Most of our snowmen have 3 balls, but some students in our class like to make 2 ball snowmen too. It did get pretty icy here too, but we still had school. Salt had to be sprinkled in the mornings before school. Our covered area outside was super slippery and some kids slipped and fell.
We have students of different nationalities in our class too! We have students who are First Nations, Chinese, Vietnamese, Finnish, and French/
Your school is much bigger than ours! We have 50 students in our school in grades k-7. There are only 3 classrooms. We have some questions for you about your school:
Ana-Do you have computers in your classroom? We have 6 computers in our room and a computer lab we can go to.
Trista-Do you have a computer lab?
Kennedy-How many classrooms do you have?
Solomon-What is your playground like? Do you have a big hill to sled on?
Quang-What does your school look like?
Brooklynn-Do you wear uniforms to school? We don’t.
Sharon-Do you have a carpet you all meet on? We have one that is a big map of Canada.
We also have a few questions about Tokyo:
Kennedy-Is the city really bright at night because of all the buildings? It is really dark here at night (we don’t live in a city).
Mia-How tall is Mt. Fuji? Can you climb it?
Trista-Do you have any parks there? We have 2 parks and a lot of forested land.
Lily-Is Mt. Fuji pretty at sunrise?
We can’t wait to hear from you again. Your new friends,
Mrs. W and the 2/3s
Dear Mrs. Watson’s class,
Yes, we have computers. We have some “netbooks” in the classroom the students use for listening to reading, Typing pal, Spelling City, IXL and other internet related things. The elementary division has one classroom for each grade K-5. There is a laptop cart with 30 Apple laptops for the elementary students to use, plus 6 iPads and about 10 netbooks in a cart. The K and 1 classrooms also have net books for listening to reading and IXL. There are also 2 computer labs, 12 or so computers in the library, 2 laptop carts for the secondary classes to use and the seniors(grade 12) each have their own computer. The elementary students don’t go to the computer lab, but they can if the teacher signs up. This year we are trying to use technology and computers in our classrooms. Second to fifth grade classrooms all have mounted projectors. I think there are about 30 classrooms in the main buildings, including the computer labs. Several of the classrooms can be divided into 2 or 3 smaller classrooms. We also have an auditorium with a large music room and several practice rooms. The gymnasium has a classroom, the main arena and a small “mini-gym” plus 2 “workout” rooms.We also have a separate cafeteria. This is a link to our school website CAJ . If you click on any of the photos you should be able to see a slide show of the students and around campus. We have a really nice campus with large cherry blossom trees and picnic tables. We have 2 play structures, a playing field(not full size for soccer, but used for a lot of soccer), and 3 tennis courts. The students do not wear uniforms but there is a dress code. We have a meeting area that is carpeted but we don’t have a special carpet. I need to work on getting one. We do have a reading loft in our classroom.
About Tokyo. Yes, it is bright at night. I have a photo a friend has taken that I would like to send to your class. Maybe your teacher could send me an email address so I could email the photo. The area I live in is not so bright. I am in “Tokyo” but it is more on the outskirts of the city. This use to be a big farming area, in fact our school is located where the dairy for the Emperor’s family was. There are still some farms, but in North America people would think they were a large garden not a farm that sold it’s produce.
Mt. Fuji is 3776 meters high. It is almost a perfect cone shape and is really beautiful any season. People love to photograph it because it looks the same from any side. It can be climbed but only in the summer for about 2 months. Many people climb at night to be at the top for the sun rise. I have never climbed it but have gone part way up by bus. You can’t drive a private car. You have to park near the base and hike, bike or take a bus part way and then hike the rest. I enjoy it at sunset, not sunrise since it is to the west of Tokyo. I love to get up and look out my living room window and see Mt. Fuji. I also love to look from the stairway at school when I am greeting the students in the morning. Many evenings I enjoy looking out and seeing the beautiful colors of the sunset and Mt. Fuji. There is even a special platform at the train station to view Mt. Fuji.
There are some parks near my home. One is a bamboo forest. There are 2 rivers that flow through Higashikurume, where I live. I can see a lot of water fowl at the river. There are many ducks, egrets and sometimes a great heron. Many of them come from Russia for the winter. In the summer I have sometime seen kingfisher. If you want to see a kingfisher look here Kingfisher . They are a small bird and many photographers sit by the river all day long to take photos of them. I enjoy walking by the river a few time a week. There are also carp and turtles in the river.
I hope this has answered some of your questions. Have a great day of learning.
Mrs. Hino
Dear Mrs. Hino,
Thank you for the wonderful reply and for answering all of our questions! We looked at your school website and we are in awe of everything we saw. Your school is amazing! Mrs. Watson was particularly jealous that you have a reading loft in your classroom and once she told us what it was, we were all jealous too 🙂
We thought it was very cool that your school is built on the land that once was home to the Emperor’s dairy. We don’t have many farms here in Sointula (the weather isn’t warm enough for a lot of gardening without greenhouses), but there are a few families with big gardens and some people have cows, chickens, and goats.
Mt. Fuji sounds beautiful. It must have been a wonderful view. We have a great view of the ocean and mountains from our island and we also have a lot of forested land. We would love to see the picture your friend took. Mrs. Watson’s email address is (soingirl at hotmail.com).
We have herons and kingfishers here too. We also have eagles that nest in our trees and several other kids of birds. There aren’t any dangerous animals here on our little island which is very nice. We do have a lot of deer though and they sure do like to eat our gardens. Do you have any dangerous animals where you live?
Thanks a million for everything you are sharing with us!
Mrs. W and the 2/3s