Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Have a great Christmas Break! 

Santa letters

Our Santa letters will be read on myFM on Friday after the 6 o'clock news. :)

Wednesday

Today we finally got to go outside for all recesses.  It was great to be able to play in the fresh air, and run and run and run!

We did some pratcising in the gym for the christmas concert and it went well.  They are all super excited!!!!
Everyone is welcome and no limits to numbers and they kinders are to wear PJ's.  The whole school is wearing PJ's. 

See you all tomorrow at 2:15 for the concert! :)

Thursday

Today we had Ms. Hebert for the whole day so we got lots done!  It is always nice to have an extra set of hands.

We worked on dreambox today for math.  We did some work with the rekenereks.  It was great seeing the kinders trying to figure out the numbers!  Here is a link to what we did today!

http://www.dreambox.com/teachertools



We are also going to work on our Christmas glyph today since we have extra hands.  :) We are making a Santa that will represent information about us and our thoughts about Christmas.

I am away tomorrow so there will not be an entry.  See you on Monday! :)

Wednesday

Today we are back at our routines.  We are working so well as a group.  Ms. Shelly and I are so proud of everyone! 

We are making new groups for our interventions in the mornings and we are so excited to see the new groups and the learning that will take place. 

Today we talked about probability in math groups.  This is a very tricky concept to learn.  We played our snowman game and they enjoyed the spinners! We will look at this concept again next week as well.  We are still looking at numbers as well. So dot plates, 10 and 5 frames, and dice are our focus as well.

Jan Brett is still our author and we are reading The Wild Christmas Reindeer! 
  

Jan Brett is an amazing author and illustrator.  The Kinders are loving her books!

Have a great night!

Gingerbread Day!

Today we made gingerbread cookies.  We made mittens, boys, stars, snowflakes and trees.  We had alot of fun!  I will tweet some pictures as well.  As a class we talked about measurement, shapes, and cooperation.  It was loads of fun! :)

It was very quiet at school today as the rest of the school was away at RCI watching Cinderella.  But we had alot of fun here all by ourselves.

We are still working on our Christmas crafts and having lots of fun with it! 

Here's to a great rest of the week!  Happy Tuesday Everyone!

Happy Monday

Hi all, I hope everyone had a great weekend!  I know I saw a few faces at the Santa Claus Parade.  :)

Today we worked on echo reading and we are also doing a review on letters and sounds and then other groups worked on word families, writing and acitivities on the ipads.  It is really great to see the groups work so well in the room. 

In math, we will be looking at probability this week.  We will be using a spinner that will help us build a snowman.  Take a look at twitter to see what the game looks like.

We are also working on making sure we can write our names.  Please look for a name writing kit that might come home with your child.  If we send one home with your child, it will be in the front of your child's agenda.  Not all students will be getting a kit.  So please don't panic if you don't get one. 

Have a great night and enjoy the snow.    

Friday

Wow only two more weeks til Christmas Holidays.We are busy practising for the Christmas Concert which will be on the last school day before Christmas Holidays.  Please check the newsletter for more details.

We are writing letters to Santa and sending them to myFM.  Santa and Kurtis the Elf read them on air.  I will try to give you a heads up for when they will be read.  Thanks to myFM for doing this every year!  It is great fun to hear the letters on the radio. 

We worked on 5 and 10 frames today.  We are really working hard trying to see numbers in groups and subitize them.  Dice are a great way to practice subitizing numbers.

Today we also read The Hat by Jan Brett.  What a great book.  I love all the great illustrations and the animals are so cute.  The children love these stories.  Again if you have any Jan Brett books send them in and we will share with the class and then send them back home.  :)

                                           



Have a great weekend and if you happen to go to the Santa Claus Parade, have  fun and enjoy! :)

Computer Issues Fixed!

Thank goodness the computer issue is fixed. 

Today we had so much fun outside in the snow.  Lots of forts are being made and the children are playing nicely together. 

We worked on the mitten again today.  We nearly have everyone done! So during this activity we did a recall of the order the animals went into the mitten and then we also worked on printing numbers from 1 to 8. 

We read a story about snow today. The children really enjoyed learning about snow!  Snowflakes are really cool!

We did shared reading again today and learned how to hug words and letters.  We also answered some higher order thinking questions.  As a class we are working on answering questions that have more than just a yes or no answer. 

Thank you to everyone that sent in craft supplies.  We are working well on our Christmas crafts. :)We hope that you all enjoy them when they come home(later on for a gift). :)

Drive safe with this weather!

Sorry I had computer issues at school...so late post.

Sorry all...

Today we had a busy day....we worked on some activities with the story The Mitten.  We started making mittens and ordering the characters to do the retelling.  We will continue with this during the rest of the week.

We also worked on some Christmas presents.  We love crafts.

We had reading buddies today. :) We are all doing great with our buddies.

Hope the computer issues are fixed for tomorrow.  Have a great night.

Monday

We had some fun visitors today.  Addison's parents came to say hi, and they are both police officers.  They promised that they would visit again so that we could try on more gear.  Check out twitter for pictures of the quick visit. 

In math we are still working on sorting.  We sorted dinaosurs and it was amazing to see all the different ways the kinders decided to sort the dinosaurs.  We sorted by number of legs, colour, horns, no horns, spikes, no spikes, etc.  They really used their imagination. 

We also worked on Christmas crafts.  Wow we are in the Holiday Spirit here!  We sang some holiday songs and the kiddies loved it. 

We did some shared reading today and three different groups.  Ask your child what they read about today!


Our read aloud today was The Mitten by Jan Brett and for the month of December she will be our author of focus.  So if you have any Jan Brett books please feel free to send them in to share with the class. :)

 

Thursday

The children had alot of questions about snow today.  We actually had a water table full of snow with one side packed and one side full of fluffy snow.  The children wondered which side would melt first. They also had some great wonder questions about snow and the water table.

We worked on sorting today in math groups.  We sorted ourselves in some groups and we sorted ourselves in many different ways.  In another group we looked at attributes and used our knoweldge of same and different to make groups.  It was a lot of fun seeing the different ways we can sort.

We are also nearing the end of our diaries.  The children have really enjoyed this activity.  We may be able to send them home to share if everyone is really careful as they are not laminated. 

We will be sending home our Eric Carle books starting today!  Please be gentle with our books as we spent a lot of time on these and everyone is so proud of their work. 

Also please remember to send in extra mitts for your child as many of the children have wet mitts even before school starts. Just make sure you tell your child where you are putting the extra mitts so they know where they are.  Thanks for your help with this. :)

Inclement Weather Day

Sorry ...buses cancelled...school open.

Tuesday

We had Inquiry Buddy work today!  It was great fun! We had the buddies come up with questions together and they came up with some great questions.  Your child will come home with their work tonight that shows what they did with their inquiry partner. 

In gym we played hot beanbag and we had to get rid of all of our bean bags over the volleyball net.   It is really hard to throw a beanbag over a volleyball net.  Everyone was a great sport.  The team with the fewest number of beanbags on their side won.  So we were at times coutning beanbags up to 26.  We are such great counters. 

We are still reading our book from yesterday.  A-Z Animals. 

We are also still looking at numbers from 0-10 and how they look with dot plates, five and ten frames, on rekenreks, and even just what the numeral looks like. 

Also we will be starting sorting activities.  We have sorted things in the room already, but we are really going to be looking at sorting rules.  :)

Have a great night and Wednesday looks like it will be a white winter wonderland. :)  

Monday

Thank you for sending in snowsuits for our little freinds.  Also as extra help please practise putting on and taking off snowsuits with your child.  The more they do on their own, the better it is for the children at school.  I know it is tricky and hard for them, but the more practise they get,  the better they will get at this skill.

Today we worked with illumniations for math...it is a great site that allows us to practise with five and ten frames.  I will send the links here in case you would like to practice at home:

http://illuminations.nctm.org/Activity.aspx?id=3564

http://illuminations.nctm.org/Activity.aspx?id=3565

 The first link is for 5 frame games and the second is for the 10 frame games. 

We also read the book:

We are also still working on our diaries.  Last week we missed a few days and we talked with the kinders about how that is like a real diary.  You write some days and then not others. 

Friday!

Happy Friday everyone!

Today we had Mrs. Manwell come visit us for about an hour and we learned about Rekenreks.  It is another tool for us to use when learning about the value of numbers and how to visualize numbers without having to count everytime.  When we look at certain groups of numbers our brains subitize for us.  So that is why when we look at the dice we learn that those patterns are a certain number.  There are lots of activities that use rekenreks.  If you would like to ever use a rekenrek I can send one home and you can practise with your child. Lots of activities can be found if you google rekenrek or pinterest has alot too.

Today we read:  

It is a book for the WITS program that we use at school.

The strategy that this book teaches us is to ignore.  In the book, Rodney Rat has trouble with his speech and he is teased by the school bully.  It is a story that teaches how how to deal with those bullies.  Ask your child if they remember anything about the book. 

We are still working on our diaries.  They have been alot of fun!

In gym today we used scooters and they were a huge hit!  Ask your child if they remember what colour they had. 

I'm away. No posts today.

Wednesday

What a beautiful day! Thanks for sending hats and mitts, it helps keep them nice and warm at recess time.  Please remember to label hats and mitts as they get mixed up easily and the young children at times don't remember what they brought to school. 

We are working on our new class book.  It is an Eric Carle book.  We are hoping to get it finished up soon.  It has been a long process, but well worth it! Look to see it come home shortly.

Ms. Manwell is in today and helping with some math assessment.  We will be looking at the children's knoweldge of numbers and what numbers mean to them. 


Busy day...remember to check out twitter for pictures of the days events.

A Windy Tuesday

We are still measuring in school!  We will be looking at using scales this week to see if things are heavier or lighter.  For some this will be the first time they have ever seen scales or used them.  It will be fun to teach the kiddies how to use them and discuss heavier and lighter.  We have also been using measurement in the sand and water tables.  It is great seeing the little kinders measuring and using non standard units of measurement. 

We are still working on our diaries.  We have some group diaries on the go and we have some personal diaries being made as well.  :)  It is great to see such an interest in writing.

Reading Buddies was great fun today!  We enjoy reading with our friends from grade 4/5.  It is amazing how well we work with our older friends.

We also created a puppet show today and I am hoping to get it uploaded to twitter today.  Check it out!  They had a blast doing Little Miss Muffet. 

Have a great Tuesday Evening! :)

Monday after a long weekend

Wow...what a windy day!  Today we looked at measruement again.  We created a stick of 10 unifix cubes and then figured out things around the room that are shorter or longer than the stick of 10.  It was great fun!  We actually made a chart to show our findings.  I will tweet the picture on twitter. 

We went to see the Grade 4/5 creations that they made about animals. It was great to see what other classes do.  It was fun to see that big kids create just like we do.

Since we are reading Doreen Cronin we decided as a class that we will try to make a diary for the week.  Doreen Cronin loves writing in a diary and we thought we would try.  We are making three diaries for the class.  I can't wait to see how they turn out!

Check out twitter to see other things that we learned today. :)

Thursday...tomorrow is a day off for students

Today we had a great morning. We sang, we danced, and we played.  We also did so many other things too.  We looked at numbers, looked at letters, sight words and we had fun!  And that was just the morning! 

We went to the book fair as well and some little friends got books.  Remember the book fair is open when there are parent teacher interviews on. :)

Yesterday, Mr. G read the book Diary of a Worm,  by Doreen Cronin and the kids loved it!  Today we will read another one of her books!  It is Diary of a Fly.  Great books! :) Ask your child if they remember what a diary is. 

Have a great long weekend and see everyone Monday.

Tuesday

Ms. Hebert is here today so we got extra stuff done today!

In math we measured ourselves today!  We used coloured blocks and counted them.  We are all around 7 or 8 blocks tall.  Mrs. Pole is taller though.  :)  All groups got a turn today in a small math group and enjoyed the learning.

We are also reading Doreen Cronin books.  Google her and see how many books she has written.  They are all alot of fun. :)


In the sand table today we had a swimming pool.  Thank goodness it wasn't outside as it is cold out there!  We also worked on sharing today as it is tricky to share toys that are so much fun.   

A new week...

Happy Monday!  Today has been a mixed up day!  We had a Remembrance Day Ceremony this morning and it was so well put together!  Thank you to the Grade 5/6 class that orgainized it.  We all wore our poppies and listened very carefully to what the older students told us.

We read....another Eric Carle story today:

We also worked in our journals today and are working on spacing, and getting our message to match our pictures. :)

Have a great night.

It's Friday

Welcome Ms. Hebert!  It is so nice having you here! 

Today we looked at 101 questions again and we came up with some great questions!  It is amazing how far we have come with our questioning skills! :)

We worked with dominoes today and played Domino Parking Lot.  It is tricky adding all those dots.  If you want to play grab a set of dominos and print off a sheet like the following:




They have to put the domino in the proper parking spot.  Great practice adding and counting.  Another great activity is just playing with dice!


We are still reading Eric Carle. We love his writing!

Miss Shelly has us nearly all orgainzed.  It is so wonderful, and wow the classroom is beginning to look great!

Have a great weekend everyone! 

Thursday

Today we are still organizing the room.  Thank goodness for Miss Shelly.  She is a super organizer, she keeps me on my toes.  We are nearly done and new pictures are being taken so the Kinders have a guide for clean up!

Today we did measurement again!  Take a look at Twitter for pictures of the activities.  We had great fun!

We also did the letter Ee today, and Miss Shelly worked with a small group doing word families and others did ipad activities.  Busy times in Kindergarten.

We are so excited for tomorrow when we get to meet Ms. Hebert.  It will be great to have another set of hands in the room. :)

We are still working on our WITS program at school. And it goes rather nicely with our classroom program...STOP, TALK, and FIX IT.

Wednesday

Today is a dreary day, but the kinders have been wonderful!  We are working on mesurement still and wow we had some great investigations today. We learned that you have to have the same starting point when you measure or you can't measure properly. Also at the water and sand table we are measuring with measuring cups and measuring spoons.

Our letter of the day is Ii and we also worked on the words play, go and do.  Here are the links if you would like to practice with your child.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec0KCT_HyNE&safe=active

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZsORjBDGzc&safe=active

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hfw5szYDEY&safe=active

We are also looking at our pumpkins...they look gross!  We are learning about decomposition.  Wow these pumpkins are teaching us a lot.  Along with Sid the Science Kid who taught us about mushy bananas and decaying pumpkins. 


Have a great night and we look forward to Friday when Mrs. Hebert joins our team.  :)

Tuesday...busy day!

Today we started orgainzing our room with the children.  So far the kiddies have tried to help keep the room tidy but it is a difficult job.  So we are trying something new.  So here's to hoping that this new strategy will work.

In math we also worked on measurement and we tweeted our findings of shortest and tallest.  It was alot of fun trying to line up in order of how tall we are.

Also we learned two new colour words...check these videos out.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MPIXADaOoM&safe=active

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy-Ydp2Hul4&safe=active

Please remember to send in your yellow sheet to request an interview time.  Thanks

Monday Madness

Hi Everyone!

Welcome to the first Monday of November. Today we had a great day!  The weather was nice, our friends are nice and we are working on our WITS!

In class we worked on writing, reading, letters and sounds, and sight words.  And we also started looking at measurement.  A few groups talked about what we can use to measure, what measurement is, and we even tried to do some measuring.  It is really tricky! So review with you child things that we could measure.  This is a great dinner table conversation.

Our pumpkins that we made into an experiment are doing great.  They are actually starting to mold, and well that was not part of the experiment.  :) But nothing is happening with the seeds or sprouts yet.  But we will have patience. 

We are still reading Eric Carle and we are making a class book.  We can't wait til we can get it together and send it home so you can see their great work.


Hope everyone has a great night and keep up the great work.

We made it!

I hope everyone had a great Halloween.  It was a super busy day yesterday and today has been a little calmer. 

Today we praticed our letters and sounds while dancing and then freezing.  We did this game for a number of songs.  It was really cute.  I will upload a video to youtube today.

We also worked with our pumpkins again. We looked at the pumpkin that has a sprout in it and we will try to transplant it and see what happens.  We are also going to try to grow pumpkins from our pumpkins.  So we will fill them with soil and see what happens.  Should be interesting.

Have a great weekend.

Happy Halloween Everyone

Thanks everyone for the treats for everyone. There was so much to share.  We really appreciated all the effort everyone went to.  We put all treats that were wrapped in your child's homebag to enjoy at home and the treats that weren't wrapped we enjoyed at school. 

Today we continued with our pumpkin investigation and we gutted our pumpkins.  We found the cleanest pumpkin, the pumpkin with the most pulp and seeds and the pumpkin with the least amount of seeds, and pulp. 

We found a sprout in one of our pumpkins and we will try to take it out and see if we can grow it!  Also we are going to use some pumpkins to grow other sprouts too.  I am guessing that we may get to see some decomposition as well.

Happy Trick Or Treating tonight and enjoy! :)  Stay dry! :)

Happy Day Before Halloween!

So tomorrow will be a celebration of Halloween at school.  We will welcome treats and enjoy the sea of Black and Orange at school. 

Today we worked with our pumpkins.  We partner chatted and came up with I wonder questions and just talked to our partners about pumpkins and what we observed.  We used our senses as well to make observations.  They really enjoyed this. We also measured how tall our pumpkins were with unifix cubes and well they varied from 6 to 14 cubes high.   We will be looking at the pumpkins again later and we will be measuring other things too.  Tomorrow we will be opening the pumpkins up!  Ohhhh it promises to be messy.

We read Click, Clack BOO!  By the same author of Click, Clack Moo! They enjoyed the book.



Tuesday

Wow what learning is going on!  It is very exciting to see the progress that each of the Kinders is making.  Today we had three groups going in the morning: Ms. Shelly was playing Koosh Sight Words on the smartboard, Mrs. Pole was playing alphabet clotheline and we had a group on literacy games on the ipad.  It was a lot of fun.

In math we are still working on patterning. But the next few days will be our big pumpkin investigation!  Oh it should be fun!  Thanks to all that sent in pumpkins.  The adventure we are about to start will be amazing!

Today we also made a MUMMY...we are hoping they will be dry enough to send home tomorrow.  Look out for the cutie to come home.

Have a great night.

Happy Friday

Another week complete.  We are learning so much. Today we worked on patterns using halloween pictures.  They turned out really well.  We will continue working on patterns next week in math too.

Ms. Shelly and I are working with the children to get their Halloween craft done so that we can send it home tonight; hopefully we will finish up. They are delicate so please be careful. 

We have reading buddies today and we worked with our buddies on a sequencing activity that goes with Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?  This activity helps with retelling stories as well as recognizing colours and animals. 

Here are the letters we have covered so far in class...please review them with your child.

Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ss, Mm, Nn, Tt, Oo, Rr, Zz, Kk and Pp 

Also some of our senior kinders are working on writing, sounding out words, and spacing in their writing.  Others are working on the ipad working on games that improve phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness relates to the ability to distinguish and manipulate individual sounds, such as /f/, /ʊ/, and /t/ in the case of foot. The following are common phonemic awareness skills practiced with students:

• Phoneme isolation: which requires recognizing the individual sounds in words, for example, "Tell me the first sound you hear in the word paste" (/p/).
• Phoneme identity: which requires recognizing the common sound in different words, for example, "Tell me the sound that is the same in bike, boy and bell" (/b/).

Thursday and man is it cold outside!

Well I am back and it is cold!!!!  The little ones really need mitts and a hat if possible.  The wind is really blowing and they are outside for 20 minutes at a time. Thank you for your help!

Next week we are looking at investigating pumpkins, so if you could send in a pumpkin that would be great.  We don't need everyone to have one as we will be working in groups, but we do need some to compare.  Thanks for your help!

Today we went into the gym to learn about WITS.  It is the character education programme that is running here at school.  Ask your child if they remember what it stands for.

We also are working on a special present for halloween.  They are made from the cereal boxes that were sent in.  They are very cute!  We hope that you like them and will put them up!  They will be coming home shortly! :)

We also read another Eric Carle book today.  Ask your child if they remember which one!

Away....

I am away tomorrow at training...see everyone on Thursday for more fun activities.

Tuesday

Wow it is cold today!  Please remember that it is getting colder out there and we need to pack hats and mitts.  The yard at Admaston is very cold and open. There is little shelter from the wind, so please pack layers and extra stuff so that your child is warm.

Today Ms. Shelly and the Sk's played at Koosh Ball game on the smartboard, while I worked with the Jk's with letters and sounds with bean bags.  The Kinders are very good at multi-tasking.  :)

Patterning was our focus in math today for the remaining groups.  So please make sure you talk to your child about AB patterns and other patterns that you may notice. 

Thank you to Lexie's family that sent in spoons.  I really appreciate it.  I picked up a couple of bags last night too, so we should be ok for awhile. 

Next week we have a spirit week planned for the school, so make sure you look for a paper that comes home that explains what each day is.  The Grade 4/5 class will be planning the days and creating the sheet that will come home!  I will send it home as soon as I get it!

We started Eric Carle yesterday!  They LOVE him!!!  Hope they continue to enjoy him! 

A New Week!

Well today we made funny little monsters.  We brainstormed Halloween words and then we placed them on our little monsters.  The best thing about our monster was it was not scary, it was cute! :)  We followed simple directions and we successfully made the monster.  Check out twitter for the finished product!  They will not come home as we put them in our memory books that come home at the end of the year!  We like to save things to put in our books as then you get a nice finished product at the end of the year that shows you your child's growth throughout the year!  It is a great keepsake.  :)

Today we looked at the letter Zz and reviewed our other letters too.  I can tell out little friends have been practising because more and more of us are remembering what the letters and sounds are.  Wow!

We also looked at a cute Halloween song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm1qvX1ygOo&safe=active

Also thank you to Ainslee for the crickets. Sharky and Snowflake will love them!

Also check out twitter, I will post more Sparky and Fightman Chad photos.  We ran out of time on Friday, so we will get them posted as soon as we can! 



Friday!

Thank you to Ainslee's family for volunteering to feed Sharky and Snowflake next week.  Great news!  We will send home the cricket cage tonight. Rick's Hobbies on mainstreet will have everything you need if you go there!  Thanks again!

Today Ms. Shelly was away so Mrs. M was in our room!  She was very helpful!  But the Kinders still missed Ms. Shelly! :)

We looked at patterning today with some math groups.  We made patterns using our hands and we used manipulatives too.  We made simple patterns that were AB and then some of us tried harder ones. 

Also we had our literacy groups going this morning and we worked on ipads, worked with our journals and Ms. M, and some worked with Mrs. Pole on letters and sounds.  The letter today was Dd.  We also reviewed our other letters.  Here is a list of the letters we have done so far.

Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Mm, Nn, Oo, Pp, and Rr.

Please review these with your child.  If they know them and the sound, get them to try to tell you words that start with that letter and sound.  They can even practise printing those letters too. 

We will meet Sparky the Fire Saftey Mascot today!  We meet him at 2:15.  We will tweet pictures when we meet him so make sure you check twitter! :)

Thursday...tomorrow is Friday! Wow!

Wow, where did the week go? 

We have had such a great learning week.  Today we did Chalk and Sock, Echo Reading, 101 Questions, Writing(about seasons), and Math(counting), plus we had time for FUN!

Miss Shelly and I would like to ask a favour.  This year our little friends seem to be forgetting their spoons a lot. So eating puddings, yogurt, or soup is very difficult without a spoon.  So Miss Shelly and I have bought some extra plastic spoons, but we are already running low since we have so many kinders forgetting to bring their own.  So if anyone could donate a bag of plastic spoons to the class, we would appreciate it.  Also please try to remember to send spoons with your child.

Also if anyone is willing to get crickets for the geckos we need volunteers.  Braedyn's family bought us a container for the crickets and all we have to do is send that cage home and you don't even have to touch the crickets when you get them.  It is that easy. :) Please let us know if you could volunteer for this very important job!  Snowflake and Sharky thank you!

Also, please keep working on letter and sounds at home as well as sight words.  We are working hard here at school too!

Here are some videos we watched today that talk about the seasons...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTXtSGf1VdY&safe=active

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWF8Su78xik&safe=active

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5Lig67t2xg&safe=active 

Enjoy! :)

Wednesday

Welcome to the middle of the week! 

So today we sang some great songs.  Yesterday we were so busy we didn't get to sing so today we made up for it.  Check out twitter since we tweeted one of our songs: Head And Shoulders. It is a different version.  It is a great one!  Don't miss it! :)

I read with some students today and did echo reading with them and we did some small math groups.  We are working on number identification, ten frames and working with building numbers from 0 to 10.  If you want to help your child at home, review numbers to ten.  Get them to find numbers and tell you what they are and then count that many of an object.  All the children today sturggled with 1 to 1 correspondence.  This means that the children were counting objects, but were having a hard time telling how many were in the group.  So practise pointing to the objects and even moving them out of the way once you counted them.  It is a very difficult task for children.

We played 101 questions yesterday and today.  It is a website that shows a picture and then we have to come up with as many questions as possible.  We started the prompt off with "I wonder"...and wow it was amazing how well the Kinders did with this exercise.  Try it with your child tonight with the following picture and see what happens.



Tuesday After Thanksgiving

Wow, what a great why to start the week.  We all had a great four days off and we are also happy to be back at school.  We started the day with chatting with our peers and we were all so glad we could share some of our great Thanksgiving memories. 

Today we worked with our Grade 5/6 friends and we answered our questions that we brainstormed.  Today we asked a lot of questions and the questions were about so many different things.   Some of the questions were about hockey, geckos, unicorns, sharks, and dogs. 

We are also finishing up with our author Karma Wilson.  We sure have enjoyed her Bear books.  Our next authour will be Eric Carle.  Google him, he is a wonderful author.

Have a great Tuesday night everyone and look for a classroom book to come home soon.  The Kinders did a great job at creating Leaf Pictures.  They are too cute! :)

Last day this week...

Today is the Friday of the week.  We had a great day so far.  We had pictures taken today and we all looked so handsome and beautiful. But that took up a lot of our time this morning.  When we got back from pictures we started making our turkey glyphs.  They are too cute!  It is a big project, and we didn't get finished.  But it is amazing how well we listened to instructions.  If you don't know what a glyph is, google it.  They are really cool and we do lots of them during the school year. 

We also sang some Thanksgiving songs.  Thanks to the Learning Station who has some great ones! 

We had gym outside today as the gym was being used by the photographer. But who can complain when the weather is so nice.

Also today we spent time exploring in the classroom and playing with our friends. 

All in all it was a great day!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Mrs. Pole is sick...

Sorry all....no posts today...hopefully Mrs. Pole is feeling better tomorrow.

No post...

Sorry I was Lead Teacher today so I was not in the classroom.  Back to normal tomorrow! :) Have a great night!

What a rainy day!

Happy Monday everyone!

Well we had indoor recess today so we didn't get to enjoy the great wonderful world of fresh air today!  Hopefully tomorrow will look better. 

Today we looked at the letter Oo as a vowel and the two sounds that this vowel makes...here is the Have Fun Teaching video link...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EgEt0aru90&safe=active

While some of us were learning this letter we had others writing and others working on the ipads.  Never a dull moment in Kindergarten.

Also in math today we were learning about 5 and 10 frames.  Everyone had a math lesson that was tailored to their needs.  Ask your child if they know what a 5 frame is...here's to hoping they remember! :)

Here are a few links to great sites were you can practise with your child.

http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=75

http://www.dreambox.com/teachertools

Enjoy! :)

No update...

Hi all...I am away today so there will be no update...sorry.  I am away at Lead Teacher training. :)

Leaf Man

So today we continued with our investigation with leaves.  We went outside again to collect fresh fall leaves to make our leaf creations.  But first we watched a video of the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.  It is read by a 4 year old boy.  It is too sweet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLDt7Rt8OEI&list=WLyiy9XcJ37Lt1Xvszoy7FvAyJaxoUPzd9&safe=active

When we were outside we actually had a Code Red drill. So we had to hide behind the new shed that is being built outside.  It was great practice for us and we did a great job! :) The police officers couldn't see us or hear us!

But when we finally came in we made some great creations. We are hoping to make a class book with all the great things we made.  So watch for that coming home.  We have some creative people in our class.

Also today we read another Lois Ehlert book... 

This is a great book.  :)

We have been trying to get outside as much as possible to do our playing as it will be a long winter.  So it has been wonderful to see such a nice fall.

Also please make sure you are practicing letters and sounds with your child as well as the sight words that come home.  This is really good practice for your child and we appreciate your help.  Please remember to send them into school atleast once a week so we can see how things are going on their homework.

Math Sorting Video

Check out the math we did today with the leaves too! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO45C9LFgEY

Enjoy! :)

I Wonder...

Today was a beautiful day so we decided to go on a nature walk.  We found some really great colours outside and we loved the warm weather!  We ran, we explored, and we asked questions.  That is what learning is all about! :)

I told the kinders this morning that we were going on an adventure and they had to wonder what that adventure was.  So I took a video of the kinders asking questions about what we were going to do.  Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69M_YdKhV8A


They were too cute! Today was a great example of what learning is all about!  We had 28 very happy campers in class.  We learned all day through inquiry.  Wow!  Check out twitter I tweeted some pictures.

Hope everyone has an equally great evening! :)

Tuesday Kinder Tidbits

Today we found out that Snowflake is shedding her skin.  But before we found that out, I had the kinders think of I Wonder questions about Snowflake.  It told then that something was happening to her, but I didn't tell them what.  So that is where the I wonder came into play!  They had a great time!

We looked at the letter Tt today, and we sang some great songs about numbers.  Check out the link below for counting by ones.  The song is very catchy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0vlfa_bq3c&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PL9D6EE36487C3BBB5

 
Also check out twitter, I will tweet a picture of some of the questions.  :)

Have a great day and check out this website for Karma Wilson who is our new author right now!

http://karmawilson.com/

There is a parents' place on her site you might want to check out! :)

What a Gloomy Day!

Important news about the geckos.  They have food today!  Mrs. Pole quickly went to Rick's Hobbies in town and bought crickets and mealworms.  If there is anyone who would be willing to help with the purchasing of food for the geckos please let us know.  Rick's Hobbies has all we need in town, so if it is possible to share in this job...that would be great.  We could make a list of volunteers and assign weeks.  Thanks so much and we appreciate all your support.  If you wish to help just write us a quick letter in the agenda. :)

Today we started out investigation about questions.  We will be looking at how to ask and answer questions.  It is really tricky!  Tonight ask your child something they wonder about and see if they can come up with a question.  Start with ....I wonder...this helps children lead naturally to a question. 

We did some more tidying up today.  But we were REALLY loud.  Indoor recess didn't help our loudness either.  We also did our first fire drill.  We did great, but some of us did find the alarm rather loud and some of us thought that the noise went a code red drill.  But that is why we have practices.  We are so proud of how well they did.

Happy Monday Everyone!

Here is a catching tune the kids enjoyed today...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e54m6XOpRgU

Friday!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well here we are at the end of another week!  Wow time is flying by.  Today we did some house cleaning in the room.  We are having trouble keeping things clean and put away properly.  So today we moved around some centers and we put some toys away.  We will bring some things back out when we show we can be responsible.

Patrick, a JK student in the room, and his mommy and daddy provided us a link on you tube that showed us video of certain jobs being done on their farm  It was too cool.

Here is the link to Lindmilk Farms.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BarendvL

The children are so excited to watch and we are learning so many different words and we were asking questions. Wonderful!

Terry Fox run....AWESOME, and we watched a video about Terry Fox.  Miss Shelly and I realize this is a very hard concept for the child to get, but we just gave them a brief introduction.  So please talk to your child about Terry Fox as they might be confused and have questions when they get home!

Have a great weekend.

Taking on a new role...

Today I became the student for awhile while one of my students taught!  This was so much fun and so rewarding for the class.  Patrick, a JK student in the room, taught us about harvesting and packing corn.  So here is the truth, I know nothing about farming!  Yup truth be told! So Patrick started explaining to us why he was away yesterday and he told us about packing corn.  But since I don't even know how the corn gets off the field we had to start at the beginning of the harvest.  (not even sure that is really correct so bear with me!)

So we found a great video on you tube that should how farmers harvet corn...so take a look...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Tu_bFde6Ww

Then when we watched a video about packing so I could understand a little more...here is what Patrick says packing is...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmSo0gDARjU&safe=active


This is not exactly how they do it on their farm but he said it was close enough! lol

So I think I am getting a better idea of harvesting, and packing corn...what I still have a few questions.  So we are going to try to answer my questions.

This is something that is going to be a focus at school:  How to ask a question that we want answered.  Amazingly, making a question up is something that is very difficult and a concept that is very difficult for children.  We always think that kids ask a lot of questions, but if you just ask them to ask a question say about geckos, you will be surprised to know they will likely give you a statement. So that is one of our goals, work on asking questions around science and technology.

Inquiry Buddies

Today has been a busy day.  We worked with our inquiry buddies and answered our shark questions that we prepared last week.  We displayed our answers to the questions in many ways.  We used the following ways to answer the questions:

*pages on the ipad
*slideshows
*pic collage on the ipad
*notes on the ipad
*Word
*and some of us made posters.

It was great fun.  Some of us even made videos.  Here are two links of  kinders that used videos to answer their questions.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_8W7E77ek4&safe=active

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI5v2OhLKas&safe=active


What great fun we had.  :)

Today we also had to feed the geckos and clean the cage.  We also invited the Grade SK/1 class to our room to take a look at our new friends.

Busy day!

French Songs

Thanks Miss Shelly for taping this....

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o17gvAlqQDo

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SJQnD_TtgRs

Thanks Madame Howard for singing with our friends.

Tuesday

Just to note we do have another case of chicken pox in our room.  So just watch your child for spots or fevers.  Ms. McGregor is sending home a note with all relevant information. 

Today we had our second CODE RED and the children did great.  We have a few things we need to work on, we forgot to shut the ipads off and they were making a lot of noise and Mrs. Pole forgot to shut the computer screen off. But we did great.  Our SK's were great at helping the JK friends remember where to sit.  :)

Today we had the ipads going, we did chalk and sock and we learned the letter n, and we make letters with craft suplies.  So all in all a really busy day! :0)

In gym we learned colours while running around the gym to the Imagination Movers.  Watch twitter to see pictures and a French Video.  I will also provide the link later to the you tube video of the kids singing in French class.  :)

Hope everyone has a great night and it is wonderful that the kinders are doing so well.

Don't foget to ask your children about Sharky and Snowflake, our geckos.  They are sooooo cool!  

Our Geckos have arrived!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well what a great Monday!  Today thanks to Gabriel and his mommy and daddy we have two classroom pets.  We have two Leopard Geckos.  And I must admit that they are really cute!

Here are a few links that shows the great fun we had this am! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RBHbD4bCMI&safe=active

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfjuOlDqHG0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgDQI1GhVi4&safe=active

Sorry the quality isn't that great today...but it is still cute to watch. 

So our girl Gecko is pregnant and will lay her eggs in February and we should have babies by around April. :)

Stay tuned for the names of our new classroom pets.  I can just imagine what great interest these new pets will create! :)

Friday and Pancakes...delicious

What a great way to end the week...PANCAKES! We brainstormed all the ingredients and I drew pictures of the the things we needed and then the kinders helped me spell the words.  We worked on first and last sounds in the words. I was amazed at how well the kinders did at listening for those sounds.  Try a word game at home with your child and see how they do.  So ask them the first sound they hear in CAT and then say the word and then ask for the last sound in CAT...you may have to really dramatize the sound but every little effort helps. 

In math we are still looking at numbers.  Dice are a great tool as are dominoes.  Play as many games as you can with these items and you will see a drastic difference in your child's knowledge of numbers and patterns. 

Have a great weekend and remember our shark inquiry is starting and today we braistormed questions we wanted answered.  You gotta love Kindergarten. :)

Pig and Pancakes

Today we explored dice in class and the patterns that are on dice.  We counted dots one by one and we even tried to match up numbers and apples to match what we rolled.  We used the smartboard to practice this skill.  Not all math groups got to go today, so tomorrow we will be doing the other math groups so everyone gets a turn at their level.

We also played a Koosh ball game on the smartboard.  Who knew you could throw things at the smartboard?

We also read If You Give a Pig A Pancake.  So guess what we are making next time we cook???  Yup pancakes.  So I hope the little ones enjoy pancakes! :)