Looky Book

If you have a look near the bottom of this blog, near the monthly calendar, you will find looky book (lookybook.com). This is an online tool for viewing books. What will they come up with next! Just click on the picture of the book and the pages will turn. Click on the eyeballs in the top right corner and it will take you to a larger version of the book. I will attempt to change these books often and keep them focused around whatever we are learning about and in Kindergarten that could be just about anything! I would like to embed the book Stone Soup, if you know of where I could find it online, would you drop me an email.

It is just so much fun in here!

Our week was full in Kindergarten. We continued on with our apple theme and made applesauce and homemade bread and enjoyed them both. You can see pictures of us washing our apples, putting them in the crockpot, and actually making the applesauce. It was so yummy. Thanks to Brittyn for giving us apples from her tree to make this treat.
We met our first letter person, Mr. T, he makes the /t/ sounds, he has "tall teeth" and we are also learning sign language for each letter. Ask your child about Mr. T, what sound he makes, what is special about him and what is his sign.
We also spent time learning our #1 Kindergarten rule, "We never hurt anyone on the inside or the outside." We talked about what this meant and all made a promise to do our best not to break our #1 rule.
We had a great week!

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Working on our pencil grips.

We will continue to focus on a correct pencil grip. Using the correct grip allows a person to write quickly and fluidly, while a tight or awkward grip can slow writing. The correct grip also prevents physical problems with the hand and arm later in life. There is a super website that explains the tri-pod pencil grip and gives ideas for parents to help support their child in developing the proper grasp. Have a look, you may find it interesting. I know I do not have the proper grasp and as a result my hand cramps when I have to write a lot. I really try to develop the proper grasp in Kindergarten.
http://www.drawyourworld.com/grip.html
(picture is from above website)

Way Up High In An Apple Tree...

What a busy week! All of our Kindergarten kids are doing so well, although we did have two fall asleep during rest time. If I had sat down, I very well may have fallen asleep! The big news is that a new teacher has been hired, Mrs. Jill Price will be teaching the Monday/Wednesday class. I welcome Mrs. Price and look forward to working with her.
We really focused our work around apples this week. We counted apples (working on saying the number sequence 1 to 10), we painted apple trees (working on our fine motor skills), we learned three new apple poems, we practiced holding our pencils correctly and are going to continue to focus on that. We had excellent weather to visit Staci Marshall's amazing apple tree. We picked our apples and then continued on through Forestburg looking for signs of fall and nibbling our juicy apples. We even made little individual apple crisps and they were so good.
I am going to be sending home a webpermission form next week in hopes to gain each parents permission to post student pictures on this site, using only first names.
It was a great week and it ended on Thursday with a little boy going out the door and looking over his shoulder at me and hollering, "Bye Mrs. McMahon, you stay out of trouble!" Just how precious is that!

Our Apple Person

Day 2 was a success in Kindergarten! We started our first morning chore, which is working on our individual calendars. That was alot of cutting. We learned some new apple poems, ask your kids...they may surprise you with all they have learned so far. We made apple people,as you see above, just think of the fine motor skills we needed to accomplish these! We toured our WHOLE school and visited Ms. Johnson in the library and checked out our first book from the school library. We worked on our first math outcome, which is saying the number sequence 1 to 10, we did this using a parachute, bouncing apples and a xylophone.
The first week of Kindergarten was a great fun, I can't wait to see what next week will bring!

And we are off!

Well, the first day of school is in the past for 27 little Kindergarten students. We had the whole range of emotions from both children and parents. We had excitement, we had anxiety, we had fear, we had tears, and we had exuberance. The first day for me is always a bit of a shock. I always seem to remember how my classes are in June when they know EVERYTHING. I always tend to forget about September when they have no concept of school and all that it demands. These little people had to work so hard today and yesterday! They had to sit when maybe they would have rather stood, they had to sing when they may have rather chatted, they had to run in the gym when they may have rather sat, and mostly they had to do some structured work when they would have rather played at centers. That is the thing about school, there simply has to be structure and many of these little ones are not used to that. It is a huge day for them! It will not be long and they will be professionals at it and will be taking it all in stride, but for the next few weeks, maybe give them a little extra love, because they will need it. We are doing some "serious play" in Kindergarten, but it is serious and structured.
The kids did great and I am proud of all of them! I saw a little one who was sad and I saw a child go up to this student and put her arm around her and give her encouragement. The sad little one smiled and was off and going again. It is moments like this that always reinforce to me that Kindergarten is a special place to be.

Great to see ya'll!

It was great to see such an amazing turnout of parents last night at our parent meeting. Sorry I talked so fast, honestly I did not have any caffine, that was just me. I know I gave you a ton of information, but honestly you will need it all at some point. Know that you can email me with any questions that you have at jmcmahon@brsd.ab.ca . Tomorrow we have the Kindergarten Open House. I hope to get the opportunity to meet all the children tomorrow. I will have one of our parents helping me out at the computer. She will be showing and giving explanation of our school website and my blog. I will not have time to properly speak with each parent about these things tomorrow, but hopefully Penny will answer any questions you may have about the technology end of Kindergarten communication. Take advantage of Penny's knowledge while you are there, you just might learn something and that is basically what it is all about. Looking forward to meeting each and every one of the little ones tomorrow.