Be a rainbow...and Dr. Seuss

Monday was a fantastic day in Room 1! We completed our rainbow project for our hallway bulletin board - this took several days to paint and create, and we love the positive message, "Be a rainbow in someone's cloud!" We talked about all the ways we can help cheer people up. 

We also began reading some Dr. Seuss books for Reading Month. Dr. Seuss books give us lot's of practice with rhyming words and they are fun to read. We created Thing Ones and Twos and the Cat in the Hat this week. We are also creating a Dr. Seuss book of our own. 

In our Social Skills lessons, we worked on identifying when we begin to feel angry and practiced relaxing to slow down our heart rates and stay in control of our feelings. We played a game called the Noodle Game - we stand tall and stiff like sticks of uncooked noodles, and then pretend that we are getting softer and floppy during cooking. When we "lie on the bottom of the pot" like cooked spaghetti, we take three belly breaths...now our bodies feel relaxed. Have your child practice this at home. We also began talking about flexible thinking - we are trying to have flexible, putty brains when we are stuck. Flexible thinking helps us think about choices. 

We received exciting news from the Walled Lake Foundation for Excellence - they presented us with a wonderful mini grant to help fund another field trip to the Walled Lake Outdoor Education Center! We hope we might be able to go this spring!

*** Today, each child is bringing home a bag and folder. It will have books they are borrowing to read and work to do each day. They also are bringing home their journals. I've included a letter to explain everything, and packets were mailed to children who were absent.  I will miss all of the kids and our classroom community over these next few weeks, but will keep in touch by email, phone calls etc. I will be ready to begin again as soon as we are back together! We will learn about oviparous animals and ocean life when we return. 

Shamrocks and leprechauns...

We had fun painting shamrocks and making leprechauns. We used gold coins to turn our leprechauns into math problems. 

In our social skills lessons this week, we talked about feeling too excited - being in the yellow zone. Sometimes, when we are too excited and not listening or following directions, we aren't safe. We worked hard this week on following directions and getting back to the green zone quickly. We also worked on changing our plan when the teacher gives a direction that is different than what we wanted to do. 

We are really excited to welcome a new girl classmate to Room 1 next week!

On Friday, we had a little celebration! We had worked together on Thursday to earn 113 tallies and no check- marks - and we did it! 

More Fairy Tales and "Lion Weather"

We read "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and all agreed that Goldilocks did several things wrong in this fairy tale, AND, many boys thought she should have apologized and tried to fix up what she broke. 

We made beds for Sleeping Beauty and added a tiny pea after reading that fairy tale. Some boys thought the test the queen gave the princess was a really good one! 

After we read "Rapunzel", we made towers for our own Rapunzels and wrote about this in our journals.  

We are learning a new poem for March about leprechauns. 

Our two snow days gave us a perfect opportunity to talk about "lion" and "lamb" weather. Today, we made lions...next week we'll make some lambs. 

Fairy Tales

We are really enjoying all of the different versions of fairy tales. We are able to recognize several fairy tale features in the stories we read: magic, talking animals, heroes, happy endings.  We loved "Jack in the Beanstalk" and recognized that Jack was wrong to take things that belonged to the giant. We used photos of ourselves to put on the beanstalks we made. 

We read several "Red Riding Hood" stories and talked about wolves. We learned that wolves are carnivores who live in a "pack", but they really don't like to be around people. Red Riding Hood learned an important lesson about not talking to strangers - we wrote about this in our journals. 

We also two versions of "The Three Little Pigs"...one from the pigs point of view, and one from the wolves point of view. We are learning that we need to look at a problem from both sides to really understand it. We made pigs and chose straw, sticks or bricks to complete our art work. 

We added two new anchor charts to help us with problem solving. The first one helps us understand that feedback is helpful. We want our students to be able to make positive changes in their behavior, and this requires them to be able to "hear" our feedback/suggestions and talk about a different way of doing something. We really could call it "feed forward" - we are focusing on a change the next time. 

We are also working on problem solving. This sign helps us remember that when we are upset/have a problem we need to: STOP (our bodies/words), THINK, EXPLORE our OPTIONS, PICK the best one. 

The highlight of our week was our Valentine's Day Party! We loved the snacks and treats and most of all, opening all of our valentines cards! It was also Miss Mattson's last day with us before she heads to complete her student teaching at another school. We will miss her! 

I hope you all have a wonderful week off next week and enjoy this extra time with your children. We will read more fairy tales after break - maybe you'll read some over break too! 

Rainy day stories

The milder weather has brought our old friend, Chubby, back to our window bird feeder. We enjoy watching Chubby and his funny antics!

We read a great book, "The Day it Rained Hearts", and talked about the feelings in the story. 

We read a second book about rain, "A Letter to Amy". This book was written by an author familiar to us, Ezra Jack Keats. We used different techniques to make the stormy sky in our art. We talked about the beginning, middle and end of the story and about the different feelings and problems that the boy experienced. 

Mrs. Schnieders worked with us practicing using coping skills. We acted out the coping skills with stuffed animals. This would be great practice at home too! 

We made our valentines mailboxes! They look like bees. 

Students may bring in their valentines cards any time now - they only need to sign their own names and then they will drop a card into each bee mailbox. Our party is next Friday, on Valentine's Day. If you'd like to send in a snack, treat or drink, just let me know - much thanks! 

Penguins, Walrus, Groundhogs and Accepting Feedback

We have been learning about feedback. Feedback is usually helpful - it gives us an idea about how we can do things differently to have more success. We are practicing accepting feedback and making a change. We also are continuing our work with "size of the problem".
We made some penguins and walruses this week as we completed our polar animal science unit.

We are getting ready for February and Valentine's Day by learning a new poem. We will make our mailboxes here at school. Our party will be on Friday, February 14. Students may bring their valentines cards anytime from next Friday on. They only need to sign their own names on their cards - we have 10 boys in our classroom. If you'd like to send in juice, a treat or snack for our party, just let me know!  We have no food allergies. 

We love building with our center toys and zones tubs!!!!