Journal entries

We've been busy writing in our journals this week and reading our entries aloud.

Grades 4/5 finished reading all their journal entries today on "Ma famille".  Those who had a bit of extra time enjoyed illustrating their journals:

The Grade 5/6 class wrote and read about about their Festival du Voyageur Week:

Bravo, mes élèves!  A job well done by all!  In all classes, we will continue to review all of the "Questions of the Week" from this term.

Bonne fin de semaine!

Mme Christensen

Our Festival du Voyageur Week--Many Thanks!

Tuesday, Feb. 18 was the date of our Festival du Voyageur fieldtrip!  Grades 3-8 participated and took in a variety of workshops at the University of St. Boniface as well as at Voyageur Park.  The maple taffy was a big hit!  Please check the blogs of all classroom teachers for more pictures.

Some of us, posing with the Voyageur on stilts.

The Lord blessed us with delightful, balmy weather!  We were so grateful and thankful!  The wonderful weather made our whole day so enjoyable. 

A huge thank you is in order as well to the many parent drivers and chaperones, teachers and to our principal, Mrs. McCrea, who all made this day possible.

Wednesday, Feb. 19--The Sights of the Festival!  Students dressed like voyageurs or pioneer women and entered a draw for prizes.

Thursday, Feb. 20--The Sounds of the Festival!  Thank you, Mr. Badiuk for hosting a fiddling contest and spoon-playing workshops with our students!

The Kindergarten class playing spoons

Friday, Feb. 21--The Tastes of the Festival--plus the "Concours des Meilleurs"!  Thank you to the parents for bringing bannock.  Thank you as well to Mrs. McCrea and Mrs. Madden, our secretary, who helped to serve the whole school pea soup.  We had lots of energy for the fun relay activities in the gym. Merci beaucoup, Mr. Wozney, for running the Voyageur relays in gym class all day!

The team skiing event gave students an idea of what it must have been like for the Voyageurs to work as a team, paddling their canoes in synch with one another.

Voyageur pillow battle!

Students also participated in the Voyageur costume relay and portaging relay.  What a fun week we had!

Pea Soup

2 1/4 cups dried split peas

8 cups water

1 large onion

1 cup finely chopped celery

1/4 tsp pepper

1 smoked pork hock (try Miller's meats!) or 1 ham bone

3 medium carrots, chopped into small pieces

Heat peas and water to boiling in stock pot.  Boil uncovered 2 minutes; remove from heat and let stand one hour.

Stir in onion, celery and pepper.  Add pork hock/ham bone.  Heat to boiling; reduce heat and cover and simmer about 1 1/2 hours or until peas are tender.

Remove pork hock/ham bone; trim meat and cut into 1/2" pieces.  Stir ham and carrots into soup.  Heat to boiling.  Reduce heat; cover and simmer until carrots are tender and soup is of desired consistency, about 30 minutes.

Bon appétit!

Our "Questions of the Week" will be "Est-ce que tu as des frères et des soeurs?" and a review of "En quelle année es-tu?"

À bientôt,

Mme Christensen

The Sights, Sounds, Tastes of the Festival du Voyageur

Remember in the fall we were looking for evidence of French culture in our community? Festival du Voyageur is a feast for the senses; it is the largest winter festival in Western Canada and now is in its 45th year. Let's take in a couple sights!

Snow sculpture at Main and Broadway

St. Mary's Road and Marion Street

What other sights of the Festival du Voyageur are there in our community?

At school we will be enjoying Festival du Voyageur week:

Wednesday, February 19: The Sights of the Festival  Students are invited to dress like a Voyageur or a Pioneer Woman…and win a chance for prizes at the end of the day from “Recycle Everywhere”!  To enter the contest, students need to be wearing at least two Voyageur costume elements (tuque, sash/scarf can be used), checkered shirt, brown or dark pants, beard made of materials from recycling bin, mocassins/mukluks.  Costume elements for the Pioneer Woman include a bonnet (made from recyclables), shawl, long skirt, apron, mocassins or mukluks.

Thursday, February 20: The Sounds of the Festival  Mr. Badiuk will be featuring musical activities that will be sure to get your toes tapping to the tunes from the Fur Trade Era.

Friday, February 21: The Taste of the Festival…and some fun! Students have the option of tasting pea soup and bannock.  That will energize us for the relay activities, also known as the “Concours des Meilleurs” that Mr. Wozney will be hosting in gym class.

Please check this link for more information about the clothing, lifestyle and history of the Voyageur and of the fur trade era: http://festivalvoyageur.mb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Activity-Workbook-ang-2013.pdf 

On another note, this past week we have been finishing up our journal entries on our family unit.  

C'est ma famille!

Our questions of the week will be repeated.  It's going to be a fun-filled week!

À bientôt!

Mme Christensen

Our snow sculpture is completed!

Sixty-five pairs of hands make light work!  As the weather was fairly nice Thursday and Friday, we were able to have all Basic French students in Grades 3-8 participate in carving our snow sculpture.

Students were divided into four groups and assigned each corner of the sculpture.

We had some great laughs!

Work done thus far by Grades 3-5

Now it's time to carve more upper portions.

Be careful where you stand!

Finished work.

We will be repeating last week's "Questions of the Week" for a bit more practice.

À bientôt!

Mme Christensen

La bûche de Noël, our latest French club creation

La bûche de Noël

This is a traditional French dessert that we were not able to make in December.  However, it's not too late to savour "la bûche de Noël"!  We enjoyed using our skills to decorate it in French club this week.  Here is our recipe:

La bûche de Noël

4 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa 
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Powdered sugar
250 mL whipping cream, whipped with 2 tbsp powdered sugar
chocolate icing (We used Duncan Hines'.)
strawberries for garnish, if desired

Heat oven to 375.  Line jelly roll pan with parchment paper.  Beat eggs on high speed for 5 minutes in medium bowl.  Gradually add sugar.  Beat in water and vanilla on low speed.  Gradually add flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt, beating just until batter is smooth. Pour into pan, spreading into corners.  

Bake 15 minutes.  Immediately loosen cake from pan and invert onto clean tea towel generously sprinkled with powdered sugar.  Carefully remove paper.  While hot, gently roll cake and towel together.  Allow to cool on wire rack.  Unroll cake and remove towel.  Fill with whipping cream.

Decorate roll with chocolate icing, creating the appearance of a log.  Garnish with strawberries or any other fruit; sprinkle with icing sugar.

Savourez-la!

*  *  *  *  *

On another note, we hope that the weather will be a bit better so that we can begin our snow sculpture carving.

We are working on our journal entries describing our families (Gr. 3/4, 4/5), our school activities (5/6) and our weekend activities in the future or past tenses (7/8).

Please check our latest link to "Muzzy" which has French subtitles and is a good introduction to some basic French vocabulary and structures.

Our "Question of the Week" for Grades 3-6 is "Est-ce que tu as des frères et des soeurs?".  For Gr. 7/8, we will be asking "Qu'est-ce que tu as fait ce weekend?"

À bientôt,

Mme Christensen

How to Build a Snow Sculpture, Part 2

Le voilà!

We removed the plywood, and voilà!  The small particles in the snow create a subtle marbling in the block.  As soon as we have nicer weather, we can start to transfer grid lines onto the snow block to start our design.  Stay posted for our progress!

www.colour-splash.ca

In and around St. Boniface you can find examples of completed snow sculptures; we will see more as Festival du Voyageur approaches.  I promised I'd show you another example of my cousin's work from previous winters to demonstrate what some snow sculptors are capable of! Here is a lovely sculpture of a traditional Ukrainian couple.

On another note, we have been busy in Gr. 3/4 and 4/5 having conversations about our families.  Some students from Grades 3/4 have been presenting family pictures to our class. We will continue with more presentations this week, followed by journal entries. 

Bravo, mes élèves!

Check out some new links under "videos" for our family unit (ma famille).

Grades 5/6 have been writing sentences about "Simon's Cat" using -er verbs (see previous posts to find "Simon's Cat") and will be starting a journal entry.  Grades 7/8 are using the future and past tenses in their journal entries.  

Our "Question of the Week" for grades 3-6 is "Est-ce que tu aimes...?"   Grade 7/8 will continue to use the past and future tense in their questions of the week: "Qu'est-ce que tu as fait le week-end passé?" and "Qu'est-ce que tu vas faire ce weekend?"

À bientôt,

Mme Christensen

How to build a snow sculpture

Yes, you guessed it...that wooden box on the school's front yard contains snow for a snow sculpture.  It measures 4'L X 4'W X 6'H, so it is much smaller than the average snow sculptures in Voyageur Park, which measure at least 8' X 8' X 8'.

We'll give the snow another week to settle and pack down.  When we remove the aspenite sheets, we should have a strong rectangular prism of snow, ready for the students and I to carve.  Stay tuned to see what it will become!

I am blessed to have a very artistic cousin, Ralph Tanchak, who is experienced in snow sculpting and who has in the past competed in the snow-sculpting competition at Festival du Voyageur.  He is a professional artist who does amazing commissioned works of art, art workshops and has a website at www.colour-splash.ca  . He kindly shared with me some tips and tricks of the trade:

www.colour-splash.ca

How to build a box to house the snow

  Fill your box with fresh snow and allow to settle 1-2 weeks.  Any size of box will do.

www.colour-splash.ca

Make a design on paper first, showing the overhead, front and side views of your design.  Then using grid lines, transfer your design onto your block of snow.  Scale: 1" square on paper = 1' square on your snow block.

www.colour-splash.ca

Artist Ralph Tanchak at work.  He recommends using anything that carves--spatulas, square garden spades, even hand saws.    

A Voyageur on a Harley?!?!

I hope to share more of Ralph's snow sculpture photos in another post.  Stay tuned.

A bientôt!

Mme Christensen