Breathing | The Chapel

Thank you, Jenn, for your wonderful class! They were amazing, respectful and so appreciative of everything I had to share with them. I enjoyed being in your class. I’ve collected a few ideas here that I thought other teachers might appreciate.

These art ideas are colourful and include subjects that grade three students adore, ANIMALS! I turned on Duke’s LIVE Eagle Cam while the students wrote their journal pages this morning and they were amazed.

I browsed around as they worked and discovered some wonderful guidance in the word walls, the charts and the resources that are posted for student use throughout the classroom.

This afternoon, I spoke to the students a little bit about how we can sometimes feel abandoned by God, at times when big things happen, like the news of so many people having to leave their homes in Fort McMurray. This morning in Health, we had learned about several ways to calm ourselves down when life is stressful and we practiced a five minute meditation together. It was amazing how calming that time was!

So, we wondered this afternoon,’when something big happens, what are some ways that we can calm down the stressful feelings we are having?’ Well, it is really helpful to know that there are kind and caring people around who are going to be there for us. I spoke to them about the Footprints prayer and that sometimes when we don’t experience God close to us, “it is then that HE carries us”. We are not alone. Look at the lilies of the fields. Look at the sparrows…the tiny birds…if our Father loves them, how much more does He love us?

I moved from this shared conversation into an art activity where I spoke to the students about observing a sparrow family in a vent across from my kitchen table. I’ve watched these sparrows for the past six years. At this point, there were all sorts of stories shared about nests/eggs/sparrows and I tried to listen to every one of them.

The students are really getting to appreciate that a visual journal is for practice and exploration. I was really impressed by their studies.

I handed out small-scale pieces of heavy toothed white paper for their final compositions. While students were drawing, they took turns painting swirling sky colour onto blue construction mural paper, in order to create a sense of spring and atmosphere. The students added colour with pencil crayon, to their final depictions and after observing several projected images of sparrows.