From the witches...

Mrs. McMahon and Mrs. Sveahun wish you a Spooktacular Halloween!

Grandparents Day was a hit....

We held our annual Grandparents Day in Kindergarten and it turned out very well. We had 21 Kindergarten kids and about 35 Grandmas and Grandpas, our room was packed. We had Grandparents from as far away as Saskatchewan, many had to take the day off and we appreciate them spending their precious time with us! Our morning was filled with preparations, we made Thank You poems with our handprints and jar candle holders, an idea I found on one of the blogs I follow, Best Bites. These were made with tissue paper, jars and huge amounts of a glue and water solution. Was it a huge mess? YES, but they loved it and they looked so cute when they were done as you can see above. Enjoy our little show and have a Happy Halloween!

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The "horrible hair" of Mr. H

We got to meet Mr. H last week. All our our "Letter People" have something special about them and our Mr. H has some "horrible hair!" We can also tell you the sound that letter h makes and show you sign language for that letter. We worked on printing upper and lower case h's and we all know that you ALWAYS START YOUR LETTERS AT THE TOP! Take a moment to watch below and see just how hard these little ones were working! These five year olds are engaged and completing the task at hand, of course 15 minutes earlier they had been singing "5 Little Pumpkins" at the top of their lungs! How can you not love Kindergarten!

On Thursday, we travelled to Grosse Ile, Quebec!

We were all thrilled to visit with Ms. Anderson and her Kindergarten kids. I could tell you lots but instead I will let you visit Ms. Anderson's blog, she and her classes voice thread can tell you. Just click on "Ms. Anderson's blog" in the red letters above and see what the kids in Grosse Ile thought about our unique experience. Thanks again to our cyperpals in Grosse Ile, we will be seeing you again soon.

Hello out there!

Here is a big "Welcome to our school" to the Kindergarten kids from Grosse Ile, Quebec. They and their teacher, Ms. Anderson will be joining our little flock of students by video conference on Thursday morning. We have plans to introduce ourselves, sing some apple songs, read a book and dicuss our class mascots Melvin the Moose (ours) and Larry the Lobster (theirs). This will be the first video conference our two classes will participate in this year. We will see them on the large video screen and they will see us. This certainly does make our world seem just a bit smaller when we have the opportunity to participate in activities like this. Have a look at the map below if you don't know where Grosse Ile is. It is an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

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You just have no idea!

Today was a huge day for Mrs. McMahon...I finally got my adjustable Smartboard installed in my classroom. This may be the coolest teaching tool I have ever seen and it is in MY classroom. I really have not stopped giggling. The beauty of the Smartboard is that it is adjustable, with one hand I can lower it so even my shortest Kindergarten student can reach the top of the board. The Smartboard is interactive, meaning with just a touch of a finger we can move things around the screen, write on it (with our finger), play learning games without a mouse, with just our finger.

I could go on about the million other things it will do, but honestly, at this point I really don't know what all it is capable of, but I am going to find out. I knew from the moment the topic of a Smartboard came up that I did not want it to be only a teacher tool, I wanted the kids to utilize it in every way. So today, our first day with it, we just jumped in. Was I nervous about letting 5 year olds around it....yep. We started with some simple rules:
1) You do not write on it with ANYTHING except your finger! We do have Smartboard pens, but I though we should stick to our fingers for now.
2) You must be over 30 years old to move the board up and down. We had a Dad come in at lunch and although he could move things around the screen, he could not move it up and down because he was only 28 years old.
The kids were super excited and as you can see from the pictures having a Smartboard in Kindergarten is nothing but a good thing!

A bit of house keeping....

Hey parents, our class newsletters and calendars are available on the sidebar of this blog. Remember to send the web permission forms back to school ASAP, so we can get some great pictures of the kids up. It is fun to get a glimpse of them in their world.
Don't forget to listen to Melvin the Moose who is looking at you to your right, he has a message for you.

Also, at the bottom of the blog page is a google calendar that is updated regularly to show parent helpers and major events in our Kindergarten world.