Christmas greetings from the Kindergarten Kids to you...

Another little find...

We all remember the game Simon, don't we. Well, here it is online promoting fine motor, sequencing and memory skills. Grab your little one on your lap and give it a go...SIMON.
Thanks to Worthwhile Websites for bringing this little goodie to my attention.

Santa's Office and Mrs. Claus' Kitchen

Well, if you think things are busy at the North Pole right now you just take a look at our "House" center. It has been transformed into Mrs.Claus' Kitchen and Santa's Office. There was a flury of activity today, have a look. Also, our little elf was going around collecting names for Santa's list!

For our little emerging readers...

Great little site for our emerging readers. Between The Lions
Anything we can do to excite them about reading, let's do it!
Between the Lions offers a wealth of literacy resources - games, stories, video clips, and activities - for you to share with your emerging reader.
Special notice, I got my links working, I feel like a genius!

Hello Mr. B

This week we have been busy with many things and one of them being meeting Mr. B. Mr. B, as I am sure you have heard has "beautiful buttons." Ask your child what sound Mr. B makes and what his sign is in sign language. Have a look below as my lovely assistant shows you all our hard work with Mr. B.

(Here is Mr. B, cut, glued and colored using five different colors)
(Here we have our phonetic work and our printing of Mr. B and other letters we have met.)

(Oh, we worked hard and did amazing work today!)

A Glimpse into Kindergarten

Alphabet Antics

Found a good site for letter recognition:
http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/kids/antics/monkey.swf
We will be playing this in the computer lab at school, it would be a great little activity to participate in with your child at home.

I seem to be having technical difficulties getting links to post in my blog. You can copy and paste the above address into your address window or go to the side of blog in the "Links I like" section and just click on it from there.

Check us out!

We are just becoming so techno-savy in Kindergarten I can hardly stand it! The post below is our introduction for the Kindergarten kids at Grosse Ile Kindergarten in Grosse Ile, Quebec. They did the same thing for us and posted it on a site that we can see at school. We are waiting for the Kindergarten kids in Montreal to post their introductions. Our kids loved hearing themselves recorded. A huge thank you to my techno parent Penny for assisting in many ways with this project, including spending the morning with us recording the children.
P.S. Take a moment and use google earth to see where Grosse Ile,Quebec actually is. Google Earth is a free download and it is really fascinating to check out places in the world.

Kindergarten Introductions

Comments, please!

I opened my email today and had an email from a teacher in NEW ZEALAND! He had found our little blog and his class in NEW ZEALAND was interested in making a comment about one of the posts. Just how amazing is that! Kids in NEW ZEALAND are following what our kids in rural Alberta are doing. That just makes our world a little bit smaller.
So, if you would ever like to make a comment about our classroom blog, comment away, I would love to hear what you have to say, it keeps me motivated knowing that others are enjoying seeing what the Kindergarten kids are up to.

Look at these lovely little finds....

An online Etch A Sketch, great for fine motor control. With your child, make some letters and numbers, but remember START AT THE TOP!
Just copy this link into your address window, or click on it in my links section.
http://www.etchy.org/

An artpad, the really neat thing about this one is you can replay what you paint, this is great for reinforcing the proper motor control pathways for each letter, the kids can actually rewatch themselves making the letters correctly, STARTING AT THE TOP!
We will be going to the computer lab with our Gr.3 buddies to practice our letters and numbers on both of these sites.
Just copy and paste this link into your address window, or click on it in my link section.
http://artpad.art.com/artpad/painter/

Another great field trip!

A cast was put on and the procedure is explained...






The Hospital was a busy place today with our 28 students visiting. We saw everything from the xray room, to the new bath tub, to the big freezer in the kitchen and where you go to get stitches. A big thank you to Laurie and Charlotte for being great tour guides at the hospital. A HUGE thanks to Kevin for driving the bus and to Dale, Shelley, and Nikki for going along to help out with whatever was needed. It was a good day...

One of the best field trips in the history of Kindergarten!

Wow! Our towns firefighters and EMT's are amazing, not only to they save lives, they gave us one of the best field trips ever! Little children are often scared of these people, because they represent scary situations. Our Kindergarten kids were given the best introduction to these amazing people today. They got to run an obstacle course wearing fireman boots, screw on hose nozzles, and shot water at targets. They got to turn the sirens and lights on in the firetruck and crawl all over the firetruck. They each got their own stuffed animals which they were able to cover with bandages, bandaids and they each got their own oxygen mask, just how cool is that! We toured the ambulance and each had a strecher ride, even me.
A huge thankyou to Tara, Karen and Kevin for making our visit to the firehall an amazing experience for our little ones!

The first little snowflakes were swirling around my window this morning!

Our Number Dice Game

Today we played a dice game. The focus of this activity was to recognize numbers 1-5 and write them in the appropriate columns and also to take turns. The activity involved students working with a partner and taking turns rolling a number dice. Whatever number they rolled, they would then write that number in the appropriate column on their recording sheet. This would be a great game to play at home to reinforce your child's recognition of numbers. Watch these two little number wizards to see how it is done.

Here comes our first attempt at video, keep your fingers crossed that it will work!

We have learned so many Halloween poems and songs, I wanted to share one with you. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Kindergarten Kids performing, "I'm a Little Pumpkin."

What a super Grandparents Day we had!

The little pumpkin pies have been made by the children, the songs have been sung, the pumpkins have been carved, the thank you cards have been delivered. Grandparents Day 08 is over. It was a great day.

Chores, chores, chores...

We are doing our chores all on our own now! Each morning when the children get to school, they bring their bluebooks into class and put them in the proper box. From there, they start their chores. They look at the chart stand and see what chores are listed for them that day. On most days, they will have three chores:
1)Student calendars
*We have to keep track of what day it is. They have to glue a precut square onto the correct number on their calendar.
2)Attendance Chart
*The students all use special little papers and write their first name and put it in the little pocket with their picture on it. That is name practice everyday. After Christmas we will start writing our last names, and our phone numbers.
3)Answer the Question of the Day
*They have to get someone to read the question of the day for them and then they must place their clothspin with their name on it on the correct side of the chart, answering either yes or no. The question can be anything from "Does Mr. T have tall teeth?" to "Does Mrs. Sveahun have six children?"

This activity builds all kinds of skills including following routines, fine motor skills, number recognition, organization, practice writing names, and getting tasks completed in a specific amount of time.

Stone Soup Day is Tomorrow

Hello all,
Don't forget that tomorrow is our traditional Stone Soup day at Forestburg Elementary. Each child is asked to bring a washed, chopped vegetable to add to our big soup pot. We also ask that each child bring their own bowl and spoon. We will have extras on hand for the students who forget. We will be having a digital presentation of the book, Stone Soup in the morning and an assembly to further expand on our October Expect Respect topic of "Sharing." All students in Kindergarten to Grade 6 will receive delicious stone soup for lunch.
***No peas, please (we have an allergy to peas)***

Found a great book on Lookybook.

Found a super non-fiction book about pumpkins, kids just love pumpkins. Click on the eyeballs to make it larger.

It is all about letters and numbers!

Wow, did we work hard this week! We learned so much. We met Mr. N, he of course has the special quality of a "noisy nose." We printed Mr. N, ALWAYS starting our letters at the top. We have now meet letters T,F,H and N. Your child should be able to recognize each letter (upper and lower case), tell you what sound each one makes and tell you what is special about each one (Mr. T has tall teeth, Mr. F has funny feet, Mr. H has horrible hair and Mr. N has a noisy nose.)
Lots of focus on numbers 1-10. We have been counting forward and backwards to ten and playing lots of number games. We also worked on our shapes. We should all be able to draw a circle, square, triangle and rectangle.
Oh, and we are learning some really fun Halloween songs and poems, ask your kids about them, especially, "Looking for Dracula." That is our favorite!

Copy this link into your address line and listen to a sample of our new favorite song, Looking for Dracula by Charlotte Diamond:

http://www.n-e-n.com/samples/716/LookingForDracula.mp3

Just thought I would add some pictures, everybody loves to see pictures:
1)Having fun in the sandbox.
2)The boys playing with the Zip Track that we build while working with numbers.
3)Making tickets for the airplane as these little ones were on their way to Mexico.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours....

I am thankful for many things about Kindergarten, let's see if I can name a few...

*The hugs, I am always getting hugs,

*The rambunctious little boys being "Letter Detectives" and looking for letter H with the Mission Impossible music playing.

*The beautiful feathers we got back from the students and all the effort the parents put into them, our turkey looked fabulous. (as you can see at the top of this post)

*The absolutely honest answers we get when asking the children what they are thankful for:
-Joselyn is thankful for her Grandma and Grandpa and Mommy and Daddy.
-Ava is thankful her Mom got a new job and she is thankful she has her brothers protecting her.
-Zackery is thankful for frogs and Halloween.
-Grace is thankful for her Grandma from the farm and from town, for Mrs. McMahon, her friends and Layton.
-Layton is thankful for having Thanksgiving supper at his Grandma and Grandpa's.
-Noah is thankful for his Mom and Dad, Kelsie, Delane, Granny, Grandpa, Auntie Eva and his friends.
-Brittyn is thankful for her Grandpa, Grandma, friends and Kenzie and Jaden.
-M is thankful for her Grandma.
-Luke is thankful for Halloween, Rachel, Mauriah and Maddie.
-Austin is thankful for his friends, turkeys and Halloween.
-Ian is thankful for people, his bike and his Mom and Dad.
-Kyanna is thankful for horses.
-Reese is thankful for owls and turkeys.
-Mercedes is thankful for her brothers, her Mom, her friends and her Dad.

I don't think anything I can say can top those grateful little children so have a great Thanksgiving and take a moment to think about what you are really thankful for.

Another exciting week is upon us!

Here we go on another busy week in Kindergarten. Lots of Thanksgiving talk this week, along with mailing our invitations to Grandparents Day, which is always exciting. We will meet a new letter person and I tell you, he has some "horrible hair"!
Last week was great fun, I cannot express to you how wonderful it is to have only fourteen students in this classroom, we can do so much because of our smaller numbers. If you see our principal, thank him for the effort he went through to make this happen for us.
We met Mr.F last week and he has funny feet.

We did lots of work around the letter F...as you can see:


We meet our Grade 3 buddies and we talked about NOT wanting to be "rotten bananas" as you can see by the look on my and Mrs. Coutts face:

And of course, we had center time, it just would not be Kindergarten without center time!

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.

Just found our Alberta Curriculum Handbook online, it details everything we are about in Kindergarten. You can view it or download it at education.alberta.ca/parents/resources/handbooks.aspx

Let's embrace technology and try something new...

Well, isn't this exciting! A new school year and a new blog! This blog will give me another way to communicate with the parents of the students I teach. I still plan to have my monthly newsletters and calendars, but this blog will provide technology enhanced tidbits, that have been unavailable until now. This blog is for you and I. It is for you, to give you up to date information about our fabulous Kindergarten. It is for me, because I am so excited by Web 2.0 tools, like Blogger and want to experiment with them. You get to come along for the ride, welcome aboard!