A week of kindness....

On Monday, we had a guest who told us all about her former student.  This boy is now in the army, stationed overseas. We decided that it would be kind of us to write him letters in case he was feeling homesick. We are working hard to do a great job on our letters and pictures. 

On Tuesday, Miss Qonja visited our classroom to read a book about feedback. We talked about how feedback helps us change and get better at things. We like to say, "Listening to feedback plus making a change equals a good day!" Accepting feedback is an important part of having a growth mindset - real learning and change happens when we can calmly accept feedback. We wrote about feedback in our journals. 

On Wednesday we all went to our Loon Lake Team time in other classrooms to learn more about kindness. We also had music with Miss Marlowe - everyone did a great job using the rhythm sticks!

All week long we worked on the coping skill "How Big is the Problem". We learned that our reaction needs to match the size of the problem. Most problems are small - they can be easily fixed in a very short time. A medium sized problem can be fixed, but might take more time and work. We refer to big problems as problems that involve an ambulance, someone getting hurt and/or take a very long time to fix.  We often find that our students have a reaction that is very big and it does not match the size of the problem, so this is a great coping skill to practice. 

Although the weather has been wonderful, it most likely will cool down soon. Please remember that we go outside for recess and your child will need a warm coat, hat and gloves/mittens to wear outside. They should bring these every day. It is helpful to have names inside hats and gloves. 

We earned many feathers for our headbands this week, including feathers for hallway behavior, group, following directions, being safe and being neat. We have a few more to earn next week. We feel very proud of our feathers - they were hard to earn! We also read several Native American legends from woodland Indian tribes, and created art work to go with them. We read a great book called, "The Legend of the Loon" and a Cinderella story called, "The Rough Faced Girl". 

Loon Lake is collecting non-perishable food for our canned food drive - your child might enjoy bringing in a can of food for this. 

I would like to wish all of you an early Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday with family and good food! I am so thankful that I am able to work with so many wonderful children and families - I love being in room 113 with your children!