Happy Family Day!

Third Monday of February is Family Day in Ontario. It's been around since 2008. It's a great day to beat the winter blues but not so great if members of your family work for the Federal government.  They don't get the day off. They get Remembrance Day off instead. When I lived in Ottawa, the majority of the city had the day off and it was the unofficial first day of Christmas shopping. Kids are at school and half a day was yours to do get all those errands done.

Family Day is a great day to enjoy winter. Get rid of the February blues. Go for a hike, ski or snowshoeing somewhere. Seize the day.

Tonight, we'll be having an early family dinner ending the night with some board games. Our favourites at the moment are Quirkle and the Magic Labyrinth. The Magic Labyrinth is great for our youngest. It's an easy to learn memory game.  Each wizard must race around the hidden labyrinth to collect relics. Here's a good explanation of the game.

Family day can also be the start of a new tradition. Have your kids celebrate your family by creating pictures of your family. If done every year, you'll have a collection. It'll be fun to look back at your collection an see how your child's view of your family has changed over the years. Here are a few from my daughter's collection.

Have a wonderful day! From my family to yours.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The day is almost over but I thought I would quickly share an art project I did with my grades 1-3 students last week. The goal was to create tints  and paint various size shapes to create a pop art  I chose hearts to fit this month's theme of love.
I started with the grade 1s. I didn't realize how hard it was for them  to draw multiple hearts. They struggled with it and some of them were losing confidence. I decided to draw one small heart in the middle of each rectangle and I hoped that they could follow my heart to make bigger ones.

The goal was to make tints, not drawing the hearts.
By the time they got to painting, they were just too excited. Some students were more successful than others in making their tints. After the paintings were dry, they outlined the hearts with a black sharpie. The sample below, is one 1/4 of my sample and I just multiplied it by 4 so you can visually see the potential outcome. The grade 2 and 3s were much better at drawing the hearts. Overall, I was pleased with the
project.

Materials:
9x12 construction paper
brushes
white and red paint
black sharpie