Fully Recovered

About a month ago, I shared a story about the newest member to my family, Elly.
http://bitsandpeaces08.blogspot.com/2008/08/elly.html

I mentioned how her front paw had been damaged in a small accident and Joanne and I were a bit worried that her paw might have to be amputated. As you can see from the photos below – Elly is fully recovered and she’s now almost twice as big as she was one month ago!

Clearly, you can see that I had a bit of homework to finish, last night – mixing the last few colours for the painting that the students of Kensal Park School are working on. I’m glad that Elly was there to help me.

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I began the class today, with a homework check. Yesterday, I had handed out two fun homework assignments. One was an environmental word-search. The other sheet had a list of things the children could do – every day – to make this world a better place. Here are a few of the ideas that were on this sheet:

1) Wake up every single day with a smile on your face.
2) Eat healthy food that tastes yummy.
3) Listen to all the different birds that you can hear in your backyard.
4) Pick up a piece of litter and put it in a garbage can.
5) Listen to a song that makes you feel good about yourself.

…and so on. At the bottom of the page the students are asked to think of five more ideas of there own. These are some of their answers:

6) Do not pollute.
7) Ride your bike.
8) Be nice to all people.
9) Do something nice for somebody
10) Plant a tree
11) Spend time thinking about the Earth.
12) Be thankful for what you have.
13) Have fun.
14) Enjoy the fun shapes of the clouds.

Today’s homework assignments are to create a poem about ‘Planet Earth’ and to draw their own picture of the Earth, moon and sun. When I show up for class tomorrow, all the full-colour, pencil crayon drawings will be taped to the blackboard and I will decide which are my favourite five. The winners of this colouring contest will win an Art For Earth T-shirt! The students were very happy to hear this news.

I only spoke to the class – as a group – for about fifteen minutes. The ‘big’ presentation was yesterday. Today I wanted to get a lot of the painting finished and that is what we did.


By the end of the school day over half of the painting was completed. I’m really excited to see how it will look tomorrow!

Jim