Our Bowling Trip

We had so much fun on our bowling trip! The kids worked well with each other, and we were able to bowl for an entire hour! I overheard classmates saying encouraging words to one another - every child was a wonderful bowler! It was a great learning experience for us to take our coping skills outside of our classroom and into the community. We are grateful to the Walled Lake Foundation for Excellence who provided us with a mini-grant. We used funds from this mini-grant to pay for the school bus that took us to and from the bowling alley.

A busy week with Seuss, nouns and leprechauns...

Look who visited our classroom! We loved reading all sorts of Dr. Seuss books this week!

Our social skills lessons focused on using positive self talk to help with strong feelings like anger and jealousy. We practiced bumping out a upset/negative thought and bumping in a good/positive thought. Positive self talk engages the thinking part of the brain and helps divert student's attention from negative self-talk, which can escalate strong feelings. We are working hard on using coping skills instead of other things that may cause the problem to get bigger. We also are working hard to re-frame mistakes as opportunities to get feedback and make changes.
We learned that nouns are words that name people, places or things - we all identified some nouns in a  little bird book we made.
We also had time for some leprechaun fun...we even found little letters from a leprechaun outside our fairy door. Some days there were treats...and today there was a container full of magic powder! We were left a note that said to add milk and shake the container, repeating some leprechaun words. When we were done, we had a special treat to eat!

Our Animal Unit is Done!

Wow! We have finished our big animal research projects! This was a new process for our class, and a great learning experience. We read/looked at non-fiction books about animals, and learned how to find specific information  -   what the animal eats, where its habitat is, who are its predators etc. We learned how to write the information down neatly, and how to add illustrations and diagrams. This week we took time to share our  finished projects with one another -everyone felt very proud! We are bringing home our finished research projects this weekend -please let your child share his/hers with you. We will begin to send home our many animal art projects over the next week or so. They have brightened our walls and added to our learning!

During this unit we also worked in our science notebooks - we will bring these home in June. We sorted animals into categories (mammals, reptiles, fish, birds and amphibians), learned about animal coverings (scales, feathers, fur) and learned about different habitats.
We are excited about our upcoming field trip to Wonderland Lanes Bowling Alley, sponsored in part by a mini grant from the WL Foundation for Excellence.  We will go with Dr. Cohen's class on March 25. Please fill out and send back the permission slip. If possible, we are asking for $5.00 to help with the cost. This will be a wonderful opportunity to practice social skills and teamwork.
We are excited to welcome a new friend to our classroom! Now we have 14 children in Room 113! We love opportunities to practice turn taking, asking for help and sharing - here are some friends playing at Center Time together. This is not an easy skill for us - we practice staying at our center, cleaning up calmly and quietly, and talking to our partner.