A Wonderful Performance for our Families!

We practiced fair ways to play with a friend in our Skills for Learning lesson this week. We learned that sometimes friends have trouble agreeing on a toy or game to play. We can talk with our friend and see if we can be a problem solver. Some fair ways to solve a problem include sharing and taking turns.
We finished reading "Charlotte's Web" - we really loved that book! We all had a favorite character, and we were able to find traits in them that were both good and bad - just like in people!  For example, Templeton was a scheming, grumpy rat...but he also brought Charlotte words for her web and he agreed to get her egg sac down for Wilber. I hope that you will enjoy reading with and to your child this summer - it is a wonderful way to develop attention span as well as many literacy skills.
After a great deal of hard work, we were really excited to present our Coping Skills Celebration to our families! It was wonderful to see so many of you there to support your child - we appreciate that important home-school connection! I hope you enjoyed the program, and I hope you felt proud of your child and his or her progress this year. I know I was!

Our trip to the Outdoor Center...

We had such a wonderful day at the Outdoor Center today! This is all of us hugging a big tree named George.

We learned about spiders and insects from Mrs. Lacey.

We tried on special glasses to see what it would be like to have insect compound eyes.

We took a really long hike through the woods. We listened and looked for animals. We did a lot of climbing!

After our picnic lunch, we sat on the dock and watched little fish swimming in the river.

We loved the stuffed animals! We worked with partners to build potato creatures and then took them outside to hide after learning how animals blend in to their environments.

We were tired, but it was a wonderful experience for us!

Our Moth

Our moth came out of the cocoon it had made this week. It was a huge moth, and we were able to really see it close up. We know that moths fly at night and have feathery antennae. We were able to see the opening in the cocoon where the moth came out, and when we opened up the old cocoon, we were amazed to see the empty skin from the caterpillar. We have continued to work on many insect activities - we have learned so much!

This time of year can be especially challenging for our students. In additon to more daylight hours and changes in bedtime schedules and routines, this is also a period of transition for many children as we approach summertime. We often see some behavioral regression or other problems that have not appeared for a long time. You can help your child with this by making sure he/she gets enough sleep, eats a good breakfast, and has some family time. There are many fun activities ahead, and we want children to maintain safe behavior so that they are able to participate in these things. At school, we are not emphasizing summer or vacation time yet - we are focusing on having calm and happy days full of learning!

We Let our Butterflies Go!

 Today we let our five butterflies go free near a lilac bush. The were so beautiful and so much fun to watch! Many of us were very sad to say goodbye to them, but we know that they were happy to be out in the big world!  Maybe our butterflies will lay some eggs and we'll see some new caterpillars.

May excitement!

 

This is the chapter book we are reading! Not only is Charlotte's Web  my favorite book, it is also a huge benchmark for our class. We could not have read this book in the fall, but now all of our students are able to sit, listen, attend and think about the words I am reading out loud to them. We are able to discuss the setting and character traits of the people and animals in this book. It is a wonderful story about friendship, and because we have worked so hard on identifying feelings and emotions this year, we are able to talk about how Wilber, the pig, feels at different times in the story. For example, we knew that Wilber felt lonely when he didn't have a friend, and excited when he heard that Charlotte would be his friend. Wilber felt disgusted when he learned that his new friend ate flies! Reading a chapter book is a great way to build listening and attending stamina. I'm proud that we are able to enjoy this book together now!

We have continued to work on our insect unit and have learned a new song that helps us name all of the parts of an insect:  head, thorax, abdomen, six legs, compound eyes, antenna and some wings.



Today we began using a new daily note - I hope that you will find the information on it helpful. Next week, students will fill in their own date and name.

The big excitement today was that our butterflies began to emerge from their chrysalids! The first one came while we were unloading the buses. We watched all day long, but only one came out today...maybe tomorrow the rest will be flying around too!