More about the ocean...

This week we learned about crabs, oysters and sea turtles. We made a very tricky red crab and painted some beautiful hermit crabs. We had to listen to the story "A House for Hermit Crab" by Eric Carle, and remember what sea animals decorated the crab's shell. We did this by closing our "speech bubble" and opening our "thinking bubble".  We had to hold all those things in our brains during the story and then use them for our artwork. Every single student did this beautifully!

In our social skills lessons we talked about making friends. We learned that the word empathy means thinking about and understanding another person's feelings. We can use empathy to think about friendly behaviors - smiling, saying "hi" and inviting friends to play. This friendly bunch is getting ready for block recess!  

We practiced friendship skills during partner Center Time too...we share, take turns fairly, and talk things out. 

Two important upcoming events are:

* Our last Parent Support Group Meeting on Tuesday May 12 at 6:15  (note- we are starting 15 minutes later than usual this time). 

* Our Spring Celebration Program on Tuesday June 2 at 2:00 - we hope you can join us as we share some of our learning about the zones!

All about the Ocean...

This week we began our Ocean/Sea Life unit. We learned that fish have gills and scales and that they are cold-blooded. We have lungs and skin and are warm blooded. Fish always keep their eyes open, and many fish lay eggs. We made some neat fish prints for our board using paint and a large, rubber fish. This is called "gyotaku"- the Japanese word for fish rubbings.

We also learned about squid, jelly fish and sea horses. We are reading, writing and creating art every day in this unit! Your children have learned a lot - ask them to tell you about jelly fish and seahorses! Some words your children have been using in their writing are tentacles, pouch, fins, tails, and gills. Many children are labeling their drawings,  just like scientists.
On Friday we did some tie-dye art for earth day and talked about recycling and pollution.

 In our social skills lessons this week we focused on paying attention to our own personal zone and using a coping skill when things are hard or we feel frustrated. Your children know so many wonderful coping skills...using them is the next big step! When we are going to do some hard work, or make a challenging transition here, we talk about what that might feel like and what coping skill we might want to use. For example, cutting out our sea horses was tricky -- we planned ahead before we even tried to do it so that we had a coping skill ready to use for the hard part. We are also working hard to reduce grumbling, whining and "drama" when we hear a direction we don't like. These are smart children and they truly want to look and sound their best - so we are work hard on this every day!
I am happy to announce that we will have one more Parent Support Group Meeting this year! Our last meeting will be on Tuesday May 12 at 6:00. I hope you will consider joining us - we plan to talk about the summer time, using the Zones at home, and transitions.