Problem solving and Bugs!

This week, our Skills for Learning lessons have focused on problem solving. We are practicing stopping, calming down and breathing, and then trying to think of possible solutions to a problem. I have noticed that many of the children in our program have difficulty coming up with possible solutions, and tend to fall back on less successful behaviors or reactions. We will continue to work on and practice this skill throughout the rest of the spring with role plays, stories, and a lot of discussion! I hope that some of you are seeing your children practice/try out these things at home too - when you do, be sure to praise and reinforce your child's attempts. Remember that if your child is able to "teach" a coping skill to you and/or try it outside of our classroom, he/she is beginning to generalize that skill to real world situations! Although none of us likes to see our children experience frustration or strong upsets, please try to look at these things as opportunities for practicing the coping skills we have worked so hard to learn. Rather than feeling upset that a problem occurred, celebrate when an attempt to problem solve it takes place. The problems children may encounter will not go away, but with practice, your child can develop the skills that will allow him/her to be much more resilient.

We have begun to work on our Insect Life Cycle unit. We've learned that an insect has three body parts (head, thorax and abdomen) and six legs. This week we read about ladybugs (actually beetles!) and wrote about ladybug facts. Here are some of the things the kids wrote about ladybugs: they are oviparous, they eat 50 aphids a day, they have hard outer wings to protect their fragile flying wings, they are insects, they lay eggs, and they smell with their antenna. We've also introduced the words egg, larva, pupa and adult. These words will be heard again next week when we talk about butterflies. We expect our caterpillars to be in school next week! They have been traveling in the mail this week and we are anxious to meet them!

We have also been working on some of the things we'll be sharing with you on May 31st. Our End of the Year Feelings Celebration will be held at 2:00 and all family and friends are welcome to join us. We hope you can come!