Our Holiday Breakfast

We loved wearing our pajamas and felt so cozy at our Holiday Breakfast. Here are a few fun pictures!

I hope you all have a wonderful two week break - I am looking forward to spending some relaxing time with my family! I will see your children on January 6, 2014!

New Friends!

We have added two new students so there are 11 of us! Everyone helped to make our new students feel welcome, and we love having them in our class! I always feel that new students give us an opportunity to show kindness, practice friendship skills, and stretch and grow ourselves!

We continued to work on some special holiday crafts and completed a "Polar Express" mini literature unit that helped us learn about characters, settings, problems and solutions.
Our social skills lessons have been focused on the idea that "feedback" is helpful and is meant to be nice. We are learning that we can listen to feedback from a teacher, parent or friend, think about the information that the feedback gives us, and then make a change. Feedback helps us adjust what we are doing so that we can do it better. Even as adults, we need to remind ourselves that accepting feedback gives us more opportunities to grow and be successful!
Our Holiday Breakfast will be on Friday for the children in our room so send your children in a little hungry on Friday! I want to wish all of you a wonderful holiday season and two week vacation with your children -enjoy every minute! I will miss your children during the winter break!

Our Gingerbread Village!

Today we made our wonderful gingerbread houses! It was a lot of fun, and it was a great finish to our gingerbread literature unit. We have read stories about gingerbread men, a gingerbread girl, a gingerbread cowboy and a gingerbread baby! We will enjoy our gingerbread houses here and then send them home before the break.

Just a reminder that our Parent Support Group Meeting is next Wednesday December 11 at 6:30 in our classroom. I hope many of you will be able to join us!

Our HOLIDAY BREAKFAST will be the morning of Friday December 20. We will make pancakes, sausage and juice for our class -this is our gift to them, and something we always love to do. You may send your son to school hungry that day!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed the little mini-break! Last week we finished up our social studies unit about Pilgrims and Indians by making our own butter. We had learned that the Pilgrims had very limited food on the Mayflower and no way to refrigerate or cook it. We enjoyed this snack on crackers!

We began a literature unit all about Gingerbread stories today. We are reading different versions of the many Gingerbread Men/Girl tales and comparing the characters and endings. We learned that a "refrain" is a repeated phrase in a story, so we are noticing the different refrains in each story too. On Friday we will each make our own gingerbread house...pictures to come!

Our old friend, Ginger the Elf, was sitting way up high this morning when we got to school. He even brought us a funny holiday joke! We wonder where he will be tomorrow morning!
In our Social Skills lessons this week we will be talking about how people sometimes think and feel differently about the same situation. Learning that not everyone feels the same way as they do is part of building empathy.
I will have a substitute on Wednesday and Friday afternoons because I am observing students in other buildings.

We have been learning all about the Pilgrims and their journey on the Mayflower. We have read about the conditions on the ship, and what it was like for the Pilgrims when they arrived that first winter. We also have learned about the help that was given to them by the Wampanoag Indians who lived in the area. We have enjoyed making several crafts that relate to this unit - these activities also help us develop fine motor skills. We all chose woodland Indian names, made headbands, and have been busy earning feathers.
Our Skills for Learning social skills lesson was about looking at another person's face or body language for clues to how they may be feeling. It is important for children to recognize these clues - sometimes we need to look at a situation from a viewpoint other than our own and then adjust our actions or behavior. For example, if two boys are playing together at Center Time, and one boy puts his head down and has an angry look on his face, the other boy needs to think about why, and perhaps talk it out. Together, they might be able to resolve the problem -but the upset face/body language needs to be noticed first.
I hope that some of you have been talking with your children about some possible ideas for their Pay It Forward coupon. Loon Lake has received some nice emails of ways children have been doing good things in the world -  holding doors open, raking leaves, baking cookies for a neighbor, even helping with chores at home are all ways they can "pay it forward".
By now you have had a few days with the new daily note format. I hope it is giving you a little better picture of your child's day, and where any problem areas are. I know that although they take more time to fill out, they are giving me more information - and that allows me to work on those problem areas. Since we all want the boys in this classroom to make progress, it is good to know what things we really need to focus on. Thank you for your continued help and support at home!
With the cold weather here, it is important that students have hats, mittens and warm clothes on for recess, and so we will need boots and snow pants. Your child may leave his boots and snow pants here if you wish. Your child does need his name in his boots and snow pants. You may also send extra socks and pants -sometimes feet/pants get wet at recess. Please work on skills like zipping, getting jackets on, putting boots on etc. at home. We really work hard to help our students learn to be as independent as possible, and getting winter clothes on and off is great fine motor practice!
We started another new fine motor activity this week - here are some boys working on pushy pin art -ask your son to tell you about it!

And, to help get our classroom ready for winter, we are changing our "thankful" tree into a snowflake tree!

I am wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving a little early! I know that I am thankful to have all of your sons in my class - teaching them is a joy and an honor! I am also thankful to work with all of the wonderful moms, dads, grandmas and grandpas in this room! Enjoy the long weekend off and the time with your own families!

Just a reminder.... our next Parent Support group evening meeting will be on Wednesday, December 11 - we hope that many parents/grandparents can join us! We will meet from 6:30-7:30 in Room 113.

Weather, math, and feelings....

We have been talking, reading and writing about weather. On Friday we read a book called "Thunder Cake" and baked a thunder cake of our own in a crock pot. Our room sure smelled good!

We work on many math concepts during calendar time. One thing we have talked about is odd and even numbers. We always discuss why a number is odd or even. We made odd and even houses to hang on our bulletin board. We also have been practicing counting by 5's and 10's - we made some turkeys from our hands to help us count.
Our next Skills for Learning lessons focus on empathy. We will be learning how to identify emotions on other peoples' faces and talking a lot about how we are feeling and how other people might be feeling. Our goal will be to help our students express their feelings with words, especially if they need help with something.
Next Wednesday Loon Lake will begin our Pay It Forward Project. Each student will bring home a Pay It Forward card with a number on it. With your help, we hope your son will do an act of kindness for someone and give them the card. The act of kindness can be anonymous if you wish, and you can just leave the card. There is information and some videos about it on our PBIS Blog at http://loonlakeelementarypbs.blogspot.com/ .  I hope you will have fun and I hope it will be a positive way for your child to begin to think about other people.
I will be attending a special education inservice on Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 11 and 12 so there will be a substitute teacher in the room with Mrs. Aldrich and Mrs. Couveau. I would much rather be in the classroom, but sometimes our district requires us to have training on new forms etc.  This is a very nice class of boys, and I know they will do a good job while I am gone.
I want to remind you that Parent Teacher Conferences are on Thursday, November 14 - there is no school for children that day. I will send report cards home with your children on Wednesday, November 13.

What an exciting week!

We were all excited for Tuesday to arrive! The boys were very proud to have their families here to see their performance, look at their owl projects and join them during the reception. Thank you to all of you who came - I hope you feel proud of your son's hard work and efforts! It has been a great experience for our class. It was wonderful to see someone here from every family!

On Wednesday we welcomed a new student to our classroom. The boys have done a great job showing him around our classroom and being good role models. This is a very kind hearted class!

We loved putting our costumes on for our Loon Lake Halloween parade and party! Thank you parents for the wonderful and healthy snacks! They were enjoyed!

On Friday we will start working on our weather unit a little more, and begin to talk about Pilgrims and Native Americans.

Our Field Trip to the Outdoor Center

We had a beautiful day to go to the Outdoor Center! We looked for seeds in the woods on our long hike. We also saw a river and a man who was out in the river fishing. We found three owl pellets in the woods to bring back to our classroom.

Back at the Science building, we learned about bats and owls and compared them to each other. We looked around at nocturnal animals and animal skins. After lunch, we made designs with dye squeezed out of carrots and beets and made leaf rubbings. We were pretty worn out by the time we got back on the bus! We will have more pictures for you to see next week during our performance.

Pumpkin Science

Friday was a wonderful day for the Loon Lake Fun Run. The boys wore their yellow T-shirts, enjoyed running and walking outside, and had a great snack for our PTA.

Monday was "Pumpkin Palooza" in our classroom. We cut one pumpkin up and put it in a big jar, and we cut the tops off of two other pumpkins and filled them with dirt. We made predictions about what we think might happen, and wrote about/drew about our pumpkin experiments in our science journals.It was a lot of fun!  Maybe we will have something exciting to show you when you come to see our play next Tuesday!

We will go on our field trip to the Outdoor Center on Wednesday. Children need to dress warmly because we will spend some of the time outdoors. They need to pack a lunch and drink in a bag. This class loves science, so it should be a wonderful field trip!

A Great Start to our Week!

Monday was very exciting! First, one of our boys was on our school newscast. He earned a PBS slip last week and his name was chosen from the PBS mailbox - this meant he had an opportunity to read  a story about someone he admires in his life and tell why that person is one of the 5 "R's" - ready, reliable, respectful, responsible or resilient. Our classmate did a great job and inspired us all to work hard and earn PBS slips of our own.

Monday was also exciting because we received a box filled with new Center Time activities. We have Zoob, Bristle Blocks and Gears - all are for building with. We also have new Native American figures, canoes and a tepee for another center. Our class loves to build and create and these toys are great for playing with someone!

Our social skills this week were related to building stamina for focusing, and learning how to ask for help when we are stuck or don't know what to do. Sometimes frustration makes us feel like just giving up, so we encourage our students to raise their hands and say, "I need help."
On Friday afternoon our class will go out on the playground for the Loon Lake Fun Run. This is a great, PTA sponsored event for our school, as well as being a fundraiser.
 Next Wednesday is our Field Trip to the WL Outdoor Center - your son needs to dress warmly (we will be outside for many activities) and bring a lunch in a bag ( with his name on it).
We are hard at work on our play for our performance on October 29 at 2:00  - we hope many of you will be able to come see it!

 

We started our owl pellet dissection like this. We made predictions about what was inside our pellets.  Everyone had their own sterilized owl pellet and some tools to use. We each had a bone chart so we could compare the bones and skulls we found with the bones and skulls of different types of animals that an owl might eat.

 

 

We had to work very carefully to find all of the tiny bones in our pellets. It was exciting to see how many bones were inside each pellet - we could tell that different owls had eaten different animals. One pellet even had a little seed inside of it - we decided that the owl ate a mouse and the mouse had eaten a seed! When we were all done, we carefully mounted our bones on paper and glued them down. You will be able to see the bones and our owl work on the day of our play, Tuesday, October 29 at 2:00. You will be able to take the bones home with you!

 

 

Our first Parent Support Group Meeting will be this Wednesday, from 6:30-7:30.  We would love to have you join us!

 

Our Field Trip to the Outdoor Center is on October 23. 

 

 



 



 



Owl Week

This week we had a new classmate join our group! We're excited to have a new friend, and to help show him all about our classroom. Now we have 8 boys in room 113!

In our social skills lessons we are working on how to tune out distractions. There are distractions all around us at school, so we are learning about which things to focus on and which things to ignore. The coping skill, "self talk" is a good one for this - we can tell ourselves that we need to focus on the teacher or our work and we need to ignore the other sounds. The boys are working hard at building their stamina for focusing on the right things. They understand that they need to get their bodies calm in order to focus.

Have you heard about our brag tags? We each have a necklace and we work to earn special tags and beads to put on our necklaces. We've earned tags for looking and listening, for assembly behavior, for being reading wizards and for our hallway behavior. We even earned a bead on school picture day! We are pretty proud of our tags!

This week is all about owls! We are reading both fiction and non-fiction owl books, recording our new learning in special owl books, and creating owls for our classroom. On Thursday we will each dissect an owl pellet - we will show you what we find at our Halloween Play on October 29th at 2:00.  Some science words we've used this week include: nocturnal, oviparous talons, habitat, predator and pellet.

Our first Parent Support Group Meeting will be next Wednesday, October 9 from 6:30-7:30 in Room 114 (Mrs. Cohen's room, right next door to ours) I hope that many of you will be able to join us. We plan to discuss how we can work together to help change behaviors that may be problematic for your children. Our meetings are open to all parents, grandparents and caregivers. We talk openly with one another, and without judgement - just support!

Listening and focusing!

This year our classroom has five Chrome Books to learn about and use. We are able to access some great learning games to help us develop our reading and math skills, as well as our keypad skills. We also go into the computer lab on Monday mornings and work with Mr. Stearns - we need to listen and watch when he gives directions so that we can learn these new skills.

Mrs. Schnieders works with us on learning new coping skills, solving problems and developing good ways to express our feelings. She often calls over small groups to the social work table.

This week we continued to talk about how important listening is at school. We practiced ways we can focus our attention and really listen to directions, a story or even another person who is speaking to us. We also learned that we can repeat directions to help remember them - this will help us complete work easily and to know what to do in class.

Next week we will be learning about owls! We will do many science activities, including dissecting owl pellets. We will have our owl projects and our pellet dissection on display after our play on Tuesday, October 29 at 2:00. We hope many of you will be able to join us in our classroom that afternoon.

The permission slips for our field trip to the Outdoor Center on October 23 are coming home. Please fill out the permission slip and send it back. The cost is $5 - our mini-grant is paying for the rest of the cost. Your child will need to wear long pants, closed toe shoes and be dressed for outside that day. Please send a sack lunch for the field trip. We are excited about this trip!

Plants and a Play!

On Monday we arrived to find that many of our seeds had sprouted over the weekend! We know that plants need dirt, air, sun and water to grow. We observed that some of our bigger bean sprouts grew towards the sunny window. We continued to talk about trees and apples - we ended our week by making some wonderful, homemade applesauce.

Our Social Skills lessons were focused on using a coping skill to get work done or when we hear an answer we don't like. A good coping skill for school work is "one step at a time". We can focus on completing one task first before moving on to the next one. We understand that we don't have to get them all done right away, just the one we are working on. Good coping skills to use when we don't hear the answer we like are "deep breathing", "self talk" and  "bump it out" - we can breathe to feel calmer, and then tell ourselves that we can still have fun or have a good day even when everything doesn't go our way. You can create some opportunities for practice at home or model for your child how you might use some of those coping skills to get work done or to handle disappointment when things don't go your way. 

We have been working on a little Halloween play that we plan to present to our families on Tuesday, October 29 at 2:00 in our classroom. We hope that many of you will be able to come! After our play, we'll visit and have donuts and cider.

Miss Marlowe came on Tuesday for our music therapy time. We are happy that she will be with us every week on Tuesday mornings!

 

Plants and seeds and Focusing

We have been learning all about plants and have been busy taking care of the seeds we planted last Friday. We conducted an experiment with food coloring and some Napa cabbage leaves so that we could see how water travels up into the leaves of plants. Ask your child to explain what happened to the leaves.

 We looked at all kinds of seeds and talked about all the different ways that seeds travel. We are also beginning to talk about trees. We are writing much of our science learning in our science notebooks, just like real scientists! Next week we will continue to learn more about trees and read about apples and Johnny Appleseed.

 

In our Social Skills lessons this week we talked about Looking and Listening and then added Thinking about the teacher's words/directions to focus and follow directions. We need this skill to learn new things. Paying attention will help the work be easier because we will know what to do. We were able to earn a Brag Tag for Looking and Listening at Group Time - this is the first tag for our necklaces! We continue to practice and use the Coping Skill of Deep Breathing - ask your child to teach it to you!



We are excited about our upcoming field trip to the Walled Lake Outdoor Center On October 23. Much of this trip and the cost of the bus is being funded through a Foundation for Excellence mini -grant that was awarded to our two EI programs. This mini grant helps us keep the cost of our field trip low - only $5.00. Permission slips will come home closer to the trip. Our class loved our trip there last spring!

Our First Week!

Our first week of school was busy, exciting and fun! We got right back into our school routine with our work folders, our reading groups and our Group Time. Our art/music/PE schedules have not been finalized yet, but we attended all three classes this week.
We reviewed our Group Time behavior expectations and practiced how to sit, listen, look, share and learn at Group Time. This is an important skill for our children to work on - these are the learning skills they will use when they participate in general education classrooms throughout their lives. Our Social Skills lesson was a review and practice of deep breathing, not only as a coping skill, but as a transition strategy to get our minds and bodies ready for the next activity.
We read several books about a bear named Corduroy and a cat named Pete and completed art projects and writing tasks to go along with them.
We also began our first science unit about plants. We examined seeds and planted 2 different kinds of seeds. We wrote in our Science Journals too. We were all very surprised to find a fairy garden near our fairy door -with a note telling us how to take care of our new plants!

 

Your children are all wonderful and I believe we are going to have a great year together. I hope to see you all next Wednesday at 6:30 for Curriculum Night. I have some new things to show you and want to talk about our upcoming field trip!