2,4,6,8, meet me at the garden gate...

Well this made my day...

2011-05-31T10:14:00.003-06:00

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...

2011-04-18T21:36:00.002-06:00

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.....

2011-03-05T15:11:00.003-07:00

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

And they look fabulous....

2011-02-08T22:16:00.002-07:00

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....

2011-01-29T19:16:00.004-07:00

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...

2011-01-20T08:52:00.003-07:00

We just love patterning!

The Building Game

Simple Patterns

Pattern Bridge

Patterning Kaboose

For your viewing pleasure...

2011-01-18T20:44:00.002-07:00

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....

2011-01-12T17:07:00.003-07:00

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....

2011-01-06T19:51:00.006-07:00

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?

Newsletters now available online...

2010-12-28T15:44:00.003-07:00

I will now be uploading all class newsletters to our blog. Under the title above, you have the option to go to another page, just click and go to newsletters, then click the link to travel to scribd.com which is where I will be putting our newsletters and other professional reading sites/articles that I find. If you would rather receive your newsletter this way and do not require a hard copy just let me know. January Newsletter

Out of the mouths of babes...

2010-12-21T18:56:00.002-07:00

Just gotta post this...

2010-12-18T01:17:00.002-07:00

I just love this little camera advent calendar. Just roll your mouse over the tree (or your hand if you have a smartboard) and find the number of the day. Underneath is a great little kid friendly site. A nice little piece of technology for the Kindergarten crowd.

I'm just having too much fun with this!

2010-12-13T13:50:00.005-07:00

What is not to love about Elf Yourself!

A little Christmas craft with a math flair....

2010-12-08T16:19:00.008-07:00

Well, it tis the season. As a Kindergarten teacher, I just need to accept the fact that everything we do HAS to have something to do with Christmas. My little ones are consumed by the upcoming celebration so I have decided to just go with it. We made these little Christmas trees yesterday. We used our cutting skills, making sure our scissors were always pointing toward the ceiling and using our helper hand. Next we had to follow directions and make sure we put glue on the tips of our heart so our tree would end up looking like a tree. Finally, we had to add the correct number of ornaments with glue and SPARKLES (I love sparkles!)The top piece of our tree needed 2 ornaments, next section needed 3 and so on. We will hang them on our lockers to show off our fabulous counting skills.

We are caring...

2010-12-05T20:31:00.008-07:00

Our school has a character education program that we have created called "Expect Respect." Each month we have a different theme or virtue that we focus on. In November, our theme was caring. We talked about,"paying it forward." This is a pretty big concept when you are five. So we just focused on doing something nice for someone else. All the students in our elementary school were trying to create a 'feel good ripple.' I do something nice for her, then she does something nice for him, and so on and so on. Everytime we did something nice for someone in our class we would write our name on a special colored circle and put it on our door. Well, our door is covered with colored circles. We did lots of caring things for our friends. As a class, we cut up apples and took a little snack to our Grade 3 buddies, the Grade 7,8,9 band, Grade 2 and our principal and vice principal.

We also invited our Grade 3 buddies over to play centers with us.

Our monthly assembly focused on the theme of caring and we recognized students from each grade who showed this quality. This was our caring student of the month. He always watches out for his friends. If someone is in need in the classroom, on the playground or in the hallway, he lets me know. He cares about his friends.

The month of December will bring the theme of generosity to our attention.

Wonderopolis

2010-11-28T21:03:00.004-07:00

What a great little family site I just found! It is called Wonderopolis and I have added it to the sidebar on this blog. This is the way they describe themselves...
Create. Laugh. Imagine. Explore. Learn. Smile. Grow.
Visit Wonderopolis.™ It’s a place where parents seek and nurture a brighter world for their children through the power of discovery, creativity, learning and imagination. Wonderopolis™ is brought to life by the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL).
Everyday,a new wonder will be presented like...
Do horses sleep standing up?
Why do onions make us cry?
Why do we eat turkey on Thanksgiving?
These are great conversation starters for the classroom or the supper table. I look forward to using them in the classroom to promote oral language and of course to encourage those fantastic little imaginations. I am excited about the potential of this site in our classroom, thanks Wonderopolis.

A fun little site...

2010-11-24T15:34:00.003-07:00

Honestly, my favorite smell in the world is Crayola crayons. So, anytime Crayola comes out with a new kid friendly site, I am interested. Click here to visit Crayola's Coloring Page Maker. I have also added it to the sidebar under "Links for Little Ones."
Crayola Digi-Maker is worth a visit also. Thanks to Richard Byrne of Free Tech for Teachers for these little nuggets.

A little something to ponder....

2010-11-12T19:44:00.003-07:00

Our children are online. That is something that is happening and is not going to go away. I ran across this video called "Guiding our Students on the Internet," as part of a webinar I am taking on Social Media use as a teacher. This course includes tools such as twitter, delicious and diigo (social bookmarking), google reader (RSS), and google docs just to name a few. I feel that if we as teachers are not lifelong learners, we cannot help to instill that in our students. As the only Kindergarten teacher in our school, I do not have others who do what I do, through social media and especially twitter, I have been able to create a professional learning community of Kindergarten teachers and other teaching professionals who help keep me motivated, inspired and learning. As you watch the above video, can you answer the question, who is driving the car at your house?

Image: A Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from impactmatt's photostream

The Annual Kindergarten Poppy Count....

2010-11-09T16:16:00.010-07:00

It all started last Thursday after reading A Poppy is to Remember we grabbed the clipboards, our Canadian Flags and headed for the office to use our recycled juice box money to buy poppies. We were collecting data, we needed to find out who was wearing a poppy in our school.

Well, I have to tell you, the results were dismal. We found only 7 poppies in our whole K-12 school. We were disappointed and some classes got a "big, fat zero!" We told them we would be back on the following Tuesday and we expected better!
So today was the day, would we find more poppies or be disappointed yet again? Let me tell you, we were not disappointed! We found 127 poppies and the Grade 12's and Grade 3's had a full class of poppies, we gave them each three cheers for their good work. So, if you see a Kindergarten kid from our school coming, you better find a poppy, because we are on the look out!
Look at our data collection:

And here is our Remembrance Day Craft that we whipped up:

Just check us out!

2010-11-04T15:50:00.002-06:00

Look at our very first voicethread! This was a huge project. We started by partnering up and then just visiting. We needed to find out what each of our partners is good at. After this we recorded it in a prediction chart sort of way. We then needed to take pictures of our partners. This was the first time using a digital camera for some of our students. After quickly uploading our pictures to a voicethread, we made our comments. These are the comments that are directly from our predictable chart. I think we did pretty darn good for our first time. They loved hearing their voices on the voicethread and each got a big smile.

Coming up this week...

2010-11-01T15:22:00.003-06:00

I just can't wait to see what ole Frank Lemon and his mule Jenny are up to tomorrow! We will be jumping into that Science Alberta crate and doing more math/science activities. I have uploaded a voicethread for you to watch with your child. These are some of the animals that Frank found in his camp, these are all animals that live right here in Alberta. Can you identify them all? The kids and I will be learning about them and we will be making comments about what we know now and later we will also comment on what we continue to learn about these Alberta animals. This is the beginning of an ongoing project.

My spooky little jack-o-lanterns...

2010-10-29T19:26:00.000-06:00

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Grandparents Day was a hit!

2010-10-27T16:59:00.002-06:00

Feel free to comment, just click the "Comment" button and talk away! The kids would love to hear from you.

M is for Maren

2010-10-18T21:20:00.003-06:00

Every week in Kindergarten, someone is the official "Really Great Person." Of course, in Kindergarten everyone is a great person, but we choose to honor our greatness once a week. Our first "Really Great Person" is Maren. She made a poster at home that told us some of her favorites....

My favorite things by Maren,
Cake is my favorite treat.
A school bus is my favorite site to see.
I think my favorite color is cool, I like to wear pink to school.
Chicken Fingers is my favorite meal to eat.
Who is my favorite person...me!

Above is the first page of her Name Book. All students in the class wrote Maren's name at the top of their page and their name at the bottom. We had to call up our "cheerleaders" and Maren yelled into the megaphone (Give me a M, give me an A, etc.) We then had a good look at Maren and used our artists skills to draw her. After drawing our pictures we had "Artists Chair," and told one thing we liked about our pictures. All students will get their own Name Book as the year goes on. This activity has proven to be a great tool for formative assessment of student growth in letter formation, name writing, fine motor skills and drawing.

Some fun sites....

2010-10-17T20:19:00.005-06:00

Halloween is just around the corner and we really need some fun sites to visit, so here is what I found. ABCya offers free educational kids computer games and activities for elementary aged children. They offer a very good Kindergarten selection.
Here are some Halloween goodies I found...
Decorate a pumpkin
Carve a pumpkin
Halloween Bat Jigsaw Puzzle

I have also added these to our sidebar so they can be found for the next little while.