Author: Mrs. Malo

Proud mother of 3, Kaitlyn, Eileen & Michael Kindergarten Teacher
Posted in Craft Thursdays, Kindercrafts

Remembrance Day in Kindergarten

Posted on by Mrs. Malo

The one challenge I find in Kindergarten is covering topics that my Kinders may not always be developmentally or emotionally ready for – and for some Remembrance Day falls into this category.  I feel it is important to teach about Remembrance Day in Kindergarten but you need to be very sensitive to their thoughts and feelings while at the same time filtering what they are exposed to.  Our study began and finished with the song we sang at the Remembrance Day Assembly:

If you love freedom and you know it wear a poppy,

If you love freedom and you know it wear a poppy,

If you love freedom and you know it, wear a poppy just to show it,

If you love freedom and you know it wear a poppy.

I started the week before Remembrance Day by sending a copy of the song home with each child to practice for the assembly.

On Monday I read them the book A Poppy is to Remember by Heather Patterson.  This is a great picture book that explains to students why we wear poppies on Remembrance Day and who we are remembering.  It is done in a way that is very appropriate for Kindergarten aged students.  Ironically the day before I read it to my class our minister at church read it to the children during Children’s Time.

Next we began our poppy craft.  We made poppies out of coffee filters that we would hold while we sang our song at the Assembly on Remembrance Day.  On Monday each child painted two coffee filters (the basket style) red.  We put a piece of scrap paper under the filters to protect the tables. They needed to be gentle painting the filters because they can rip easily but they didn’t need to paint both sides as the paint soaked through.  Tip – peel them off the scrap paper before drying completely or they may rip.

On Wednesday I folded each filter twice and gave each student two filters.  They trimmed the edges so when they were unfolded the corners were curved like a poppy.  We laid the two filters on top of each other, poked a green pipe cleaner through the middle (making sure to curve the end, and I hot glued a black pom pom in the middle.

The other thing we had to make at school was a wreath to lay at the assembly.  The grade 2 class brought us a black wreath template and I let my volunteer Miss King figure out what we would do (with our very limited time).  She helped each child trace their hand on red construction paper and used their hand prints to make poppies on the wreath – I think it turned out pretty good>

I also wanted to do something with my own girls at home for Remembrance Day and decided to stick with the poppy theme.  I took a number of photos of different steps but something strange is going on with my camera and they are all gone.  I took another picture of the finished product to share.

I printed off two poppy pictures on white cover stock for the girls.  You can use any template you can find on google.  I used a magic marker to make the centre stand out for them.  For Kaitlyn I simply gave her glue along with red and white tissue paper and she did the rest herself. Eileen needed a bit more help.  I showed her how to rip small pieces and crumple them up and glue them on.  After a couple of minutes she politely informed me that my job was to put on the glue (because it is a bit tricky to squeeze) but she could do the rest herself.  They turned out pretty good and Kaitlyn has added them to the wall of her ‘Art Gallery’ (the walls of our playroom).

Posted in Literacy Tuesdays

N is for Night

Posted on by Mrs. Malo

So it has been a long time since we did a Literacy Tuesday activity so I wanted to try and start them back up with my girls.  We did a good job completing our N activities last Tuesday it has just taken me a while to get them added to the blog.  I have a couple of places I always check to get ideas for our letter of the week but the main one is Kiboomu.  I couldn’t come up with my own ideas so I used their N ideas for Night.  I printed off a large N for Eileen and the word Night for Kaitlyn.  They started by painting their letters all black while I cut out moons and stars from some extra yellow foam I had in the craft bin.  I could have had Kaitlyn cut out her own stars and sun but I knew Eileen would also want to, with extreme frustration.  Instead they were in charge of colouring and adding some glitter glue for fun.  When they were done I gave them their stars and  a moon each and let them glue them wherever they wanted on their work.

 

I had intentions of using this as a spring board for teaching Kaitlyn more ‘ight’ words but as life goes, we ran out of time.

Posted in Kinder science

Kindergarten Pumpkin Activities

Posted on by Mrs. Malo

Last week we finished up our study of pumpkins in my Kinderoo class.  I thought I would share a few of the activities we did.  I started with a google search for ideas and came across a great blog from Mrs. Nelson’s Class.  The one item is borrowed from this page was their awsesome Science Pumpkin Observation Sheet.

I started the unit by having all the kids sit in a circle on the carpet and I put a pumpkin in the middle of the circle.  I didn’t say much and let them start the conversion.  They first started asking where it came from and we discussed where you can get pumpkins.  I grow my own pumpkins so this branched into a discussion of growing pumpkins.  From here we introduced the word ‘observations’ which has become our BIG word in science.  I handed out the pumpkin observation sheet.  Each child drew a picture of what our pumpkin looked like and made a decision as to whether they thought it was big, medium or small.  On the back of our sheet we also recorded it’s weight (8 kg) and diameter (77 cm).

The next day when they came into school I had set up our ‘pumpkin patch’ in the science centre (sorry I forgot to take  picture).  I had gone to our best local fruit stand and purchased a wide variety of pumpkins in size, shape, colour and texture.  I arranged them all on a green table cloth to constrast the colours and make it look like grass.  On the science wall behind the patch I put a pumpkin patch sign along with a number of descriptive words: big, medium, small, orange, white, smooth and rough. For activity I placed a bin with a number of  pumpkin observation sheets and pencils next to the pumpkin patch.  Students were encouraged to visit the science centre and make their own observations on the different pumpkins present.

To go along with our pumpkin study we learned about the colour orange.  We have been learning our colours and I carefully timed orange so that it would coincide with our pumpkin study.  We learned our orange song and practiced it throughout the week. This was also sent home as homework at the end of the week.  I also have worksheets available for interested students to reinforce the colour.  Once we had learned the colour orange we also added to our observation sheet that pumpkins are orange.  As an art activity I gave each child a paper plate and a drop of yellow and red plate.  I asked them to paint their paint orange – a great exploration activity.  Once they were all dry we added faces and made our pumpkin patch on our bulletin board in the hallway.

After thoroughly observing the outside of the pumpkins it was time to cut one open.  Before cutting it open everyone made a prediction of what they thought it would look like on the inside on their observation sheet.  We cut it open and recorded our observations. I made a chart with pictures of: and eye, ear, nose, mouth and hand.  We used our five senses to record our observations.  I took the seeds home and cleaned them and dried them out.  I added to the pile the seeds I had at home from my own kids jack-o-lanterns and I also took some from my brother-in-law (who carves very cool pumpkins on Halloween).  At the next class we made our pumpkin observation booklets to record our observations from the inside of the pumpkin.

I had precut the orange construction paper for them and glued in the observation sheet.  Each student was given a piece of wool and a handful of seeds and asked to make a representation of the inside of the pumpkin.  Then they used the observations that we made as a class and recorded one observation for each of the 5 senses (they wrote ‘no sound’ beside the ear as we didn’t hear anything).

Math: When we started this unit we had just begin our lessons on counting and number recognition in math so I wanted to keep the math lessons as simple as possible.  Because of this, and the large number of seeds that can be inside a pumpkin, we didn’t do any estimation of the number of seeds in a pumpkin.  Instead my teacher partner gave me the perfect activity that fit very nicely to what we are targeting in math right now.

Each bag had a number of dots that corresponded to the the number in the upper left hand box.  Students were to glue pumpkin seeds on each dot and then count the number in each bag.  This was a bit time consuming but a great activity.  If I was to do this again I would give my more advanced students a sheet without the dots and they would have to determine the number of seeds in each bag.

Literacy:  In one of our literacy centres I had large pumpkins cut out of orange construction paper and I wrote on them the first 12 Jolly Phonics letters that we have learned.  Students had to pull a letter out of a bag, say the letter name and sound and match it to the corresponding letter on the pumpkin.  If this was easy for them they were to say a word that started with the letter: eg – s, sss, snake.

Everything in our unit went very well – and I love it when everything integrates so nicely!

Posted in Kindercrafts

Pumpkin Posts

Posted on by Mrs. Malo

So it has been an insanely long time since I blogged last.  Many things have changed since last spring.  My little man turned one along with my baby girls having an awesome 3rd birthday.  My eldest is now a  big SK and the hubby and I had a great trip to Europe.  The biggest day to day change we have had is that I have returned to work part time.  I am now teaching a great JK/SK group on Mondays, Wednesdays and some Fridays. This has changed slightly what this blog will look like.  I will hopefully continue to do many of the things I have done in the past but I also am going to try and share some of my Kinder adventures.

As both a teacher and a parent I am not a fan of keeping excess kids crafts.  Kaitlyn on the other hand has become a pack rat wanting to keep every drawing, note, and tiny craft that she does, and she does a lot of them.  I love that she is creative but there is a limit to what I can keep. I work on the philosophy that the parents of my students feel the same way and with this in mind I decided that for Halloween we would create something that parents may want to keep and bring out every Halloween – then came the pumpkin posts.  The idea came from a link from the Sunday Showcase to a blog featuring DIY Punkin’ Heads.  I approached both of the other Kindergarten teachers in my school and we agreed that this would be great craft for all three classes to do – it also helped that we were studying pumpkins.

I started by enlisting the help of my amazing father who helped me purchase the fence posts and the paint and then cut and sanded ALL 56 of them for me!  We purchased two fence posts 4″ and 5″ in diameter and he had a left over 6″ in his barn from a previous use.  I found out later that I probably could have gotten some used ones from a local ginseng farmer (something to keep in mind for next time).  He cut them a variety of lengths from approximately 6″ to 8″ long.  I wanted them all different as in a pumpkin patch pumpkins are all different.  After this I enlisted the help my Kaitlyn (who’s class would be doing these as well) to help me prime all the pumpkins.

Fortuntately is was a very mild fall day so we were able to paint outside.

We took the posts to school and over 3 days each student painted their post orange.

We all knew the challenging part was going to be the faces so we enlisted the help of our Big Buddies.  In my class the big buddies helped the Kinders by drawing on the face in pencil and then with very small paint brushes the Kinders painted the faces black.  I hot glued on the top of each post a bit of raffia, a pipecleaner stem and some ivy for leaves.  I think they turned out pretty great!

Posted in Family Adventures

Family & Fathers

Posted on by Mrs. Malo

So it is 8 in the morning on Father’s Day – Michael is playing on the floor (man does this boy want to crawl) but Gord and the girls are still sleeping.  We had my brother-in-law’s wedding yesterday so we did not get home until 2:00 am.  Michael was picked up by my parents around 10:00 so it was a late night for everyone.  It was a great day but definitely an adventure with our three kids!

As I sit and reflect waiting for everyone else to wake I was reading a bunch of father’s day blog post and it made me start reflecting on family.  We have very different relationships with both sides of our family.  I don’t think we would be able to survive without my parents!  To give just an example of the last week – they watched different children almost every day as we did things to get ready for the wedding.  I would not have been able to take Kaitlyn for her first mani/pedi if Gramma had not come over to watch Eileen and Michael.  And talking about wedding – my mom made Eileen’s dress, Michael’s matching vest and bolero jackets for both the girls.  They were all perfect!  And then there is my dad – sometimes I think he lives here!  He will drop anything at a moment’s notice to watch the kids and all I need to keep in my house is a box of green tea and a bottle of dark rum (not to be drunk together).  When we had a big wind storm a number of weeks ago and our playset was blown over and destroyed the girls were devastated but he has installed a new slide and now is working on rebuilding the swing area.  I love my husband and he is very good at many things but he is not a fix-it man, not at all.  My dad has saved me many aggravating repair jobs and probably a lot of money by fixing pretty much anything that gets broken at our place.  I know it is Father’s Day but both of my parents are amazing – they never miss a dance recital, hockey game, soccer game or any other event my kids participate in big or small and this year my mom even volunteered in Kaitlyn’s kindergarten class one afternoon a week (as if she wasn’t busy enough already).

The relationship with my inlaws is a bit different – we pretty much see them on holidays and for major events (like the wedding yesterday).  My new sister-in-law is awesome and the girls love her so hopefully they will get to spend more time with her.  Saying all that the way my husband’s aunts, uncles, and cousins helped out yesterday was amazing!! Gord was great with the kids but he was the best man so for much of the day was busy with official duties (don’t worry they got their share Daddy time once the dancing started).  During the service one of Gord’s cousin’s girlfriends, who I had met only 5 minutes early, offered to go and change Michael when he decided to mess his diaper in the church – wow!  Then Gord’s Aunt Sue stood to the side and held Michael through the service so I could have Eileen on my lap. Then during the reception all of the cousins and aunts and uncles took turns holding the kids, playing with the kids and taking them on repeated trips outside to see the water fountain. I am pretty sure some of them will have sore arms today from lifting Eileen up so many times.  When the Bride and Groom were doing their speeches I quietly looked around and noticed I didn’t even have any of my children.  Michael was asleep on Aunt Joan’s lap and the girls were cuddled up with some of the much love cousins.  They all helped make the day so much fun for all of us.

Since it is Father’s Day I can’t finish this post without mention my husband and Daddy to Michael, Eileen and Kaitlyn.  It is no big secret that Gord works alot.  He seems the have his fingers in every project, but he loves it!  Sometimes his work even takes him away for a bit (3 trips to China in the past year) but when he is home … he is home.  He is attentive with the kids and at any point you can find him rolling on the floor with Michael, dancing with the girls or curled up on the couch watching Rugrats for the 1000th time (Kaitlyn’s new obsession).  Somedays I think that Eileen is surgically attached to him and he doesn’t complain (well at least not too much).  I have no doubt in my mind that he loves those kids above anything else and would go to the end of the earth for them.

So happy Father’s Day to all and make sure to tell those around you who you appreciate how much they mean to you!

Posted in Literacy Tuesdays

Literacy Tuesdays – The letter A

Posted on by Mrs. Malo

Last week we started our alphabet wall with the letter S (we are doing them in Jolly Phonics order).  This week we did the letter A.  Again I got the template from the awesome Kiboomu website.  We didn’t do their recommended decoration of the letter this week because they recommend using ants.  I am trying to avoid the same words that are used in the Jolly Phonics program and they us ants for A.  We brainstormed other words that start with A and came up with Apple or Acorn.  I decided to use apple because it uses the soft a sound and acorn uses the hard A sound.  The same as last week, Eileen decorated the letter, while Kaitlyn decorated the word.  Eileen used her thumb to make red thumb prints all over the uppercase A and then added green stems.  Kaitlyn painted the word Apple red and added green stems at the top of each letter.  They turned out fine but I would make the outline of the letter brighter for the uppercase A next time.  If anyone has any suggestions of how to decorate a captial A please add them in the comments.

 

 

Posted in Craft Thursdays

Saving those Summer Treasures

Posted on by Mrs. Malo

My girls are collectors.  They love to find and collect treasures, and this multiplies in the summer.  I thought we could make some special boxes for them to store (and contain) their treasures this summer.  I drew inspiration from the awesome site Kiboomu.

This craft started with a trip to the dollar store.  Normally I take the kids with me so they can pick out their craft supplies but I was out without them for a meeting and stopped off on my way home.  They didn’t have exactly the boxes I was looking for but I found something that would work.  They came in many colours but I picked the light yellow ones so that it would be easier for them to paint them whatever colour they wanted.  I also found some cool shells.

The first step was to paint the boxes.  Kaitlyn’s favourite colours right now are orange and red so she painted the ends orange and the sides red.  Eileen decided to use 4 different colours and did an awesome job painting all on her own. For the lid Kaitlyn decided to paint the lower part brown for her sand and then the top blue for the water/sky.  The uneven painting created a great texture and the impression of waves in parts.  After letting them dry overnight we added real sand to the ‘sand’ portions of our lids.

To add the sand they put glue whereever they wanted the sand to stick and then sprinkled sand over top. To decrease the mess I found that working in a large baking dish was handy.  They simply poured the sand over top, then lifed the lid and shock off any excess and I poured the leftovers back in the bucket.  Other than the time when Eileen took a large handful and threw it on the table it was a relatively clean craft.  To finish off they glued on a number of shells and stones and then I added the titles for them.  An easy craft they could both do by themselves and they are now prepared for treasure hunting!

Posted in Literacy Tuesdays

Literacy Tuesdays – The Letter S

Posted on by Mrs. Malo

We have been slacking on our Literacy Tuesdays but are now trying to get back into the routine.  The difficulty I have is finding activities that can be adapted for both of my girls.  I think I may have found a strategy that we can try and at the same time parts of it may work in my Kindergarten class next year (possibly a great way to create my ABC wall).

We are going to focus on one letter every week.  Eileen will focus on identifying the letter and Kaitlyn will focus on words beginning with the letter and other activities.  I got this idea from the activities on the Kiboomu blog.  They have a craft for each letter of the alphabet and I decided to start with S as it is the first Jolly Phonics letter.  This was a last minute craft so we had to use what we had at home so we focused on sand – and this was a great first word for Kaitlyn.

This was a very easy craft.  The key is getting a good amount of glue on the words to cover as much as you can with the sand.  We used popsicle sticks to try and spread the glue.  If I did this in my arts centre at school I would also have shells and small stones available to add to the S.

I also visited DLTK’s website for some other S ideas.  We made Alphabuddy Sailor Sammy for our Alphabet wall and I also printed off the word search and mini book for Kaitlyn.  The word search is a bit difficult for her, she had trouble finding words that are not horizontal from left to right.  The book was fun for her to colour and us to read together but it is not a beginner lever reader.  There are alot of blends (eg. sh, ai), but it does have great repetition.

Now that I know what we are going to do every Tuesday it should be easier to stay on a routine (we have 26 weeks taken care of).