Saskatchewan Early Childhood Education Council

Nest-Nest Egg-Empty Nest
http://moniqueart.com/nest%20egg/nestnesteggaffinitygallery.html
Saskatchewan Craft Council – Affinity Gallery
813 Broadway Ave, Saskatoon, Sk, Canada
Installation on Broadway Ave beginning April 24
April 20-May 27, 2012

Reception: Friday, April 27, 2012 – 7:00 – 9:00pm
Curated by Leslie Potter and Stephanie Canning

The Market Mall Studio – continues until June 12
I am currently the Visual Artist-in-Residence for the PotashCorp Children’s Festival of Saskatchewan. I am creating larger than life bird nests to display at the festival and am using studio space in Market Mall (2325 Preston Ave, Saskatoon) to create.  The theme of the 2012 Children’s Festival is DREAM BIG and the nests will definitely be big.  I am is using only recycled and reclaimed materials in the creation of the nests. Come down and see the artwork or check out the blog where I post updated images as often as possible http://moniquemartinart.blogspot.com/
Sculptural Nests link is http://moniqueart.com/nest%20egg/Sculptural%20nests.html

Artist in Residence – Potash Corporation Children’s Festival
http://www.potashcorpchildrensfestival.com/site_activities.php
Kiwanis Park – installation based work
Special event at Rouge Gallery on Sunday June 3 – 12:00-3:00
First 100 families to visit Rouge Gallery on Family Day (June 3) get a special gift from the Children’s Festival Artist in Residence
June 3 – 6, 2012 – Saskatoon

for more of Monique’s amazing work:

Lessons for Teachers: http://moniqueart.com/teacherlessons.html

http://www.moniqueart.com
BLOG http://moniquemartinart.blogspot.com/

Consider this wonderful opportunity! The first cohort of this program has just completed their master’s degree and found it to be a rewarding and fulfilling experience! Consider attending this meeting to find out more about it!

MEd in ECE Ad 2012 (word document)

for more information contact:

Doctor Debbie Pushor   debbie.pushor@usask.ca

This an excellent online art program that children can use to create wonderful digital artwork, great for the Smartboard!

Elliot Eisner is an advocate for the Arts in schools…here is a great poster to display in your classroom or school about the important things that the arts teach.  (The link gives you a pdf download to the page)

http://www.hamilton-local.k12.oh.us/protected/SearchResults.aspx?q=eisner&cx=011084338979932899036:qg2cq38jxyq&cof=FORID:10&ie=UTF-8

I just discovered an online version of Peter Reynolds’ book The North Star.  You can choose a boy or a girl character and read the story online! He even offers a musical you can purchase to perform at your school.

http://www.fablevisionlearning.com/northstar/read/index.html

All of his books and materials are amazing, and you can also download free inspirational posters here: http://fablevisionlearning.com/resources/

“FableVision artwork on this website copyright by Peter H. Reynolds” http://www.fablevisionlearning.com.

Kim

Go to the Learning Station’s website to see photos Don Monopoli took at the conference, how much fun was that? Click on Saskatoon once you get to this page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36959394@N00/sets/

Also, they have many of their songs now on video!  http://www.youtube.com/user/TheLearningStation

Here are a few new titles I just discovered… some of them may not be ‘acceptable’ in your particular situation, but I am going to show them to a group of parents and get their input.  Here are the titles I got recently:

• William’s Doll -Charlotte Zolotow  (a boy who wants a doll to play with) 
• My Princess Boy- Cheryl Kilodavis (about a boy who likes to wear ‘unconventional’ clothing, acceptance) (http://www.myprincessboy.com/index.asp)
• The Family Book-Todd Parr (has a page that says ’some families have two moms or two dads’.)
• King & King- Linda de Haan (a prince’s family tries to find him a princess, but instead he ‘falls’ for the princess’ brother)
• And Tango Makes Three- Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell (two male penguins are given an egg to adopt and they raise the chick together-true story from the Central Park Zoo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyPjUa908hM&feature=related

I would love to hear your comments about this post…..

Further recommendations from Jamie Z:

Nabeel’s New Pants by Fawzia G. William?  It’s about how Muslims celebrate Eid but it’s a cute story that addresses traditions of the culture.

by Eric Carle and K. Iwamura – a bilingual book (Japanese)

It is with great sadness that I inform our members of the loss of one of our most dear teacher friends and executive members.  Erin Tisserand passed away on Friday, July 7th after a long battle with cancer.  She served on both the Saskatoon Local Executive and the Provincial Executive as well as being part of the team that brought you such great social events at the conferences.  She will be missed dearly by us all.

Jen Gruending-Pizurny, Erin Tisserand, Kim Deibert at an ECEC Conference

Here is the link to her online obituary.

http://www.legacy.com/can-saskatoon/Obituaries.asp?Page=Notice&PersonID=152438975

A Poem in Praise of Rabbits

From Marshmallow by Clare Newberry,

Tell with a bunny puppet.

A bunny is a quiet pet,

A bunny is the best thing yet,

A bunny never makes a sound,

A bunny’s nice to have around.

Puppies whimper, bark and growl;

Kittens mew, and Tom cats yowl;

Birdies twitter, chirp and tweet;

Moo-cows moo, and lambskins bleat;

Some creatures bellow, others bray;

Some hoot, or honk, or yap, or neigh;

Most creatures make annoying noises,

Even little girls and boyses.

A bunny, though is never heard,

He simply never says a word.

A bunny’s a delightful habit,

No home’s complete without a rabbit.

Submitted by: Laura Goodman

We have reached the point in the year when I begin to test the letters in the alphabet. While most don’t have all the letters at this point they should at least have some. I had one little boy who was NOT interested in the least in learning his letters and could care less about it either. I had been in contact with his mom and even though she had the flash cards and had been trying he did not care. She told me he would rather build than learn letters. When I hung up the phone the next person to I saw was our IA/PAA teacher. I asked him if he had any scraps of wood that he could donate. He said he did and I had an idea. I talked to mom and told her my plan. I would pay my little guy with wood pieces for ever letter he could learn. She agreed and later that day our shop teacher sent a student with a bucket of wood scrap. My little guy who as yet had no idea of what I was planning took one look at the wood and had to check over every piece.
At that point I told him that I would pay him wood for each letter he knew. We immediately practised the letters and I paid him three “wood” for the three he knew. I also gave him three nails (which he had to count as well – he could only count to three at this point). And I sent him home.
Later that night I got a Facebook message from his mom. He had made mom practise three times so he could get more wood the next day. He came back to school the next day and he knew 7!!!! He bugged me from the moment he came in the door until I had 10 minutes to practise that he “had to do his wood”. Each day we have practised he knows more letters and when I pay him a “wood” I write the letter (upper and lower case) on the wood. When we are done, he takes the wood to the office and reads them to the secretary and whoever else will listen. When he is done he will go to the shop teacher and tell him that “he will need more wood ’cause he knows lots of letters!” Many of the kids in the school know what he is doing as he is excited to tell them and I have found him in the hall on the floor with an older student, reading his “wood” to them.
It is things like this that make me happy to be a teacher.
PS- I have another little girl that is also having trouble with her letters and I am paying her in fabric scraps because she loves to sew.

Submitted by Robyn Hunter