Paws of the Future Celebrates!

Our final week of fundraising was a huge success for Paws! Our refreshment team was occupied during afternoon recesses selling snacks to eager customers. The refreshment stand was so popular, that we sold out mid-week and Miss Cichosz purchased more snacks with the leftover money from our Imagineaction subsidy! We sold the rest of the snacks on Friday.

We counted more cash and Miss Cichosz showed us how to roll coins. We completed a draft for a deposit slip together as a class, and Miss Cichosz submitted the final copy to the school office.
In total, we raised $1 547.90 for Manitoba Underdogs!

*A correction: Our deposit slip picture shows 311 quarters equals $77.50, but 311 quarters equals $77.75, so we raised $1 548.15 for Manitoba Underdogs. Thank you to Mrs. Darvill for fixing this error on our deposit slip!

Two representatives from Manitoba Underdogs and Ms. Smith visited us on Wednesday, at which point we had raised just over $1 400. We thanked Ms. Smith for working with us by giving her a thank you card made by a student in our class. We talked to the reps from Manitoba Underdogs and asked a lot of questions about the rescue. They hope to have a rescue shelter one day, so that they don't have to turn away any dogs who need help. Right now, all their dogs are in foster homes with volunteers, but sometimes there isn't enough space for new dogs, so they ask for help from rescue shelters. They said thank you to us and gave each of us a Manitoba Underdogs calendar to take home!

We've been busy getting ready for our Showcase, which happens Wednesday, May 25th at the Fairmont Hotel (11:30 - 1:00 p.m.). Remember, the Showcase is open to the public, so we hope to see some friendly faces if you're available!

Ceramic Art with Donna Garofalo

Our class worked with Donna Garofalo, a ceramics artist coordinated through the T.I.A. (Teaching Integrated Arts) Program. We made bowls connected to the theme we're studying in our English literacy lessons, "Champions!" First, we made the bowls. Donna rolled out the clay with a rolling pin and cut it. We put the clay over styrofoam balls covered in plastic wrap. The plastic wrap kept our bowls from sticking to the ball and we decorated our bowls with clay and carved designs while the clay was wet. We also put a foot on our bowls, so they would look more like trophies that a champion would receive.

The next time we saw Donna, we had bowls that had dried and been fired in a kiln (a really hot oven for clay). Our bowls were bisqueware, so they were hard and white (the colour of the dry clay). We painted our bowls with glaze (a special ceramic paint). Donna had figurines that had been painted with each glaze colour and then fired in the kiln. These were to show us what colour the glaze will be after the bowls are fired. Sometimes the colour of glaze can change after the clay is fired a second time.

Donna brought our bowls back when we saw her the third time. Our bowls were fired in the kiln again and finished. A few of our bowls had broken during firing, or we dropped them, but Donna said she will glue them back together, put clear glaze on them, fire them again, and return them to us. We loved how our bowls turned out! The day before, we made up interview questions, so we interviewed each other about our bowls and some of us volunteered to present about our bowls. We also did a "gallery walk," which is when we walked around to see everybody's bowl. We had a great time working with ceramics!

Family Fun Night

Our Family Fun Night was a huge success! THANK YOU to all families, school staff, friends, and community members who came out to support our business, bought tickets in support, or made a donation. Last week, we finished some final preparations leading up to the event, such as making signs, counting out our cash float for the refreshments stand, assembling door prizes, and choosing a hand stamp for guests. We set up on Thursday, May 5th, about an hour before Family Fun Night was set to start, reviewed our jobs for the event, and finished setting up early. During the event, we really came together as a team and Miss Cichosz is extremely proud of us and all the hard work we did!

We had a great turnout with many families and some school and division staff coming out to play fun games and enjoy some refreshments, plus our business partner, Ms. Smith, our friends at the Learning Partnership (Laurie Sodomlak and Jim Beveridge), and Heather Bush from the Career Development Department of our school division. Thank you to Mrs. Rogala, Mrs. McDonald, and our parent volunteers (Ms. Jonasson, Mrs. Burnett, and Mrs. Unlayao) for helping out at the event. Also thank you to everyone who helped us clean up after the event! A special thank you to Ms. Smith for donating our first door prize (a craft party pack won by Monica Penner) and for working with us throughout our business project. For our second door prize (won by a student): thank you to Mrs. Bigold for donating a gift card from High Tea Bakery, Mrs. Rogala for donating freezies, and Miss Cichosz for donating popcorn and a basket. Thank you to Monica and Jon Penner (friends of Miss Cichosz) for lending us their giant homemade Kerplunk and Jenga games and to everyone who brought in games. Thank you to Mrs. Atilano for a donation of chips and Mrs. Hay for a donation of candy kabobs. Thank you to Michelle Frost, from Manitoba Underdogs, for her support and donation made on behalf of our class. We couldn't have been so successful without the support of so many people!

We counted the cash from ticket sales, refreshments sales, and donations on Friday, May 6th and Miss Cichosz showed us how to fill out a money deposit slip and.... WE RAISED OVER $1 000 FOR MANITOBA UNDERDOGS! We plan to raise even more funds in the coming weeks as we have snacks and drinks leftover to sell at recess. We also have $100 left from our subsidy and will decide how to spend that money as a team. Most of the money we raised came from ticket and refreshment sales (over $800 in cash) and the rest came from donations. Thanks again for supporting such a worthy cause! We had a wonderful experience and we're all so excited about our work and the showcase coming up on May 25th!

Finishing signs and counting out the cash float - Refreshment Team

Final signs and tasks and our site map 

Door prize # 1 won by Monica Penner (Miss C.'s friend who let us use her giant Kerplunk and Jenga and bought tickets in support of our Family Fun Night, which Miss C. held for the draw)

We counted the cash!

You're Invited!

We hope families will join us at the Entrepreneurial Adventure Showcase where we will share about our business project. The letter and permission forms are being sent home today! The Showcase is open to the public.

Divisional Art Exhibition

We hope families were able to make it out to see the Divisional Art Exhibition last week on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 26 and 27. Miss Cichosz was happy to see so many impressed families when she supervised on Tuesday. Below are the student pieces (dream paintings) from our class with their write ups at the exhibition. We hope you enjoy viewing and reading and that you will come to the show next year!

Kryztofer's Art - Decision

 I used cardboard and acrylic and interference (shiny) paint to represent a dream I had. I used the interference paint to make certain fish in the painting shine and the gold border is like the gold bubble in my dream. After the paint dried, I outlined the value changes with black pen. I didn’t outline all of the value changes because I didn’t want them to stand out in certain places. I wanted the most important things to stand out. My painting is about the decision between two jobs and the decision I made in the dream. The two jobs are paleontologist and marine biologist. I showed paleontologist using bones and a skull of a dinosaur. I showed marine biologist with fish and my favourite marine animal, a shark. I chose the job of a marine paleontologist. I showed that with a mosasaurus skull in the centre of the painting. When I first painted the skull in the centre it was meant to be a liopleurodon, but I changed it because it looked more like a mosasaurus. I hope you liked the painting.

Odin's Art - Respect What You Have

I made a painting that represents many dreams. I painted it on cardboard with acryclic and interference paint. The interference paint is a special paint that makes it look shiny. I used bright colours because I wanted the painting to stand out and I wanted people to look at it for a while. I made a swirl on the bottom that represents the wind and an image of the sun in the top right of the painting. It shows a fight between the wind and rain versus the sun. The sun is too powerful, so the wind and rain are going away. It represents that we need to appreciate what we have. For example, sometimes it’s yucky outside, but we need to appreciate when it’s nice out and go play outside. After the paint dried, I outlined the value changes with black pen. I outlined the larger shapes and value changes to catch the viewer’s eye. I hope you like the painting and enjoy everyone else’s painting. Always go outside and appreciate what we have in nature.