Well this made my day...

Well, would you look at this! The California Teaching Credential Organization gathered together what they think are the 50 best Kindergarten blogs. Our little blog from rural Alberta made it. How cool is that! Sometimes it is nice to be recognized....

The California Teaching Credential Organization: Top 50 Kindergarten Blogs

Congratulations to all the other Kindergarten Teachers who were chosen and for all the good work they do in the classroom everyday.

Just a note...

Hello to all,
Just a little note to let the other professionals who follow my blog that I will not be teaching for the remainder of this year due to a health condition. I will be back with "bells on" as soon as possible. I miss my network of professionals through twitter and those who follow my blog and comment often. I most certainly miss my Kindergarten Kids! Thanks to all who follow who have given me tons of professional support through this blog.
Joanne

Well hey.....

Just a little message for the Kindergarten Kids. Just to let them know that Mrs. McMahon is missing them!

And they look fabulous....

I am not going to lie to you. This project turned into so much more than I expected on all levels. We have been patterning like crazy for the whole month of January and honestly, we are all pretty sick of patterns. With Valentine's right around the corner and our love of paint, I decided we would make big hearts with a pattern and decorate the school up. I thought this would be an easy activity since we are SOOOOO good at patterning. As Bloom's Taxonomy would say, we were moving to higher level thinking and applying our knowledge. But guess what, it was hard! We had to start with a red heart in the middle, then add pink, then add purple, then back to red, then pink, then purple. Sounds easy, but it was not. I don't know if it was the sheer size that overwhelmed the kids, but some really struggled with this. Of course, others sailed through, but the students who had not firmly grasped patterning were evident. Now I know that some of us need to pattern more! By the end of this enlightening project, Mrs. McMahon had paint on her shoe and pants,her hair on top her head in a sideways ponytail, and a huge sweat on. Yes, it was messy, but they loved it and were so proud of their HUGE Valentines. And I absolutely know who has not grasped the patterning concept.
And by the way, the book called Mr. Hatch, Somebody Loves You is a great read for Valentine's Day. It is available online through Storyline if you have access.

Professional Development....

We are very lucky to have strong professional development opportunities at our school. We are part of a project called AISI (Alberta Initiative for School Improvement.) We participate and complete activities under this directive at every staff meeting and PD Day. Our K-3 teachers often meet as a group to pursue tasks that include things like Blooms Taxonomy (higher level thinking) and way to create real life skills that utilize 21st learning tools. One thing our K-3 group has done is to create blog to put "stuff" we find and explain projects we are working on. One goal of this group is to add 3 interesting/educational websites a month. I decided to start adding mine to this blog so more than one group can utilize really good sites that I run upon in my web travelings. So, here are 3 of my picks for January...
Joe Bower's blog call "For the Love of Learning." I like this blog because Joe is an Albertan, he gets excited that Sir Ken Robinson is coming to Red Deer (and I am going!) and he discusses issues surrounding teacher contracts, which are a hot topic right now.
Free Technology for Teachers, an amazing blog by Richard Byrne is an amazing resource. I particularly like the blog post about decluttering YouTube videos. I always worry what is going to pop up on the sidebar while we are watching something. Richard gives three options to avoid the junk.
Bucket Fillers is a great find. Our school has a teacher created character education program that we put alot of work into. We are always looking for new ideas and this site will come in very handy. You can sign up for monthly newsletters.

Heading to the computer lab...

We just love patterning!

The Building Game

Simple Patterns

Pattern Bridge

Patterning Kaboose

For your viewing pleasure...

We continue to be super busy in Kindergarten. We have been learning about both the Inuit an our 5 senses with the help of a Science Alberta crate. We are enjoying reading Inuit stories, even though one of them kind of freaked us out! We will definately not go on the ice without our parents!
We are also knee deep in patterning. We are noticing patterns in our world and creating, extending and explaining them. In the video below you will see some of our created patterns as well as some of our sound patterns. You will notice some older students doing a sound pattern. Whenever the big kids come to our room to borrow something, which is often, I make them do something like sing or in this case, do a sound pattern. These two particular Grade 8 boys happen to be my son and his best friend.
Also, we learned about mixing colors and we loved mixing colors! As you will see some colors got mixed a bit too much!

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

The computer lab....

Patterning Game

We have been working lots on patterns so we will visit ABCya(I LOVE this site!)to practice our pattterning skills.

After visiting there, we will go to the 2Learn Alberta site which offers fantastic education games to reinforce our Kindergarten skills.

2Learn

I have added these sites to our "Links for Little Learners" sidebar section.

Happy New Years from the K-Kids....

We were very happy to see each other again after being out of school for 2 whole weeks. As soon as we arrived we have to celebrate 2011, Kindergarten style. We grabbed a hat, a very loud spinner and a tooter, we said our goodbyes to 2010 and welcomed 2011 with a countdown and all the noise we could make...
It took a bit of time to get them calmed down after that :), but finally things settled and we whipped up a little craft using our cutting skills and our tooters. I had to get rid of them or would have not survived the day.

We also read, "The Little Engine that Could." This got us in the mood to think about things that we thought we could do or do better in 2011. (Thanks to @LMAHRainbow for the idea of using this great book to set the tone for the lesson.) Here are our goals for 2011...
Kally will skate better.
Maren will go across her monkey bars at home faster.
Hayden will learn to swim better.
Ella will eat her lunch better.
Kylie will be more steady when she walks.
Hannah will learn to be a better saddle rider.
Jetta will be a better stick handler.
Jace will be better at backhand, 5 hole shots and skating in.
Carter will get a shut out during a game.
Kayde will hold his pencil right.
Rachel will go under water for a longer time.
Adrian will play baseball and bat better.
Keith will learn how to go under water and touch the bottom.
Devon wants to ride and drive a real train.
Danica would like to ride horses more.
Do you have a goal for 2011?