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! :)