All About Owls and Red and Green Choices

We did a lot of reading about owls this week. We learned that owls are nocturnal birds of prey and that they take good care of their baby owlets. We read this story on Monday and talked about how the owls felt when their mom was gone. Many children were able to identify the feeling of "sad" with the blue zone and the feeling of "scared" with the yellow zone. When the mother owl returned, the owlets were back in the green zone. 

After the story, we created this multi-step art project... it involved painting and putting words in order to build a sentence about owls. I can see real progression in our students' skill development. We worked hard on "watching" at group when the lesson was shown and the directions were given. 

This was another tricky, multi step creation that involved some round cutting. 

In our social skills lesson we began talking about green choices and red choices. We learned that green choices help us stay in the green zone, and red choices can cause problems for us. We worked together to create these charts - it is interesting how often the children come up and study them.  We will keep them up to help us really think about our behaviors. We continued to work on our learning target of ''watch the teacher or lesson" this week, and we are adding a new target - "I can turn my work in to the green basket with my name on it". 

We work hard each day on building our reading or pre-reading skills.  We feel very proud of our progress! 

***REMINDER - Monday is Halloween and a half day of school. Students may wear their costume to school that day. We will have a parade at 10:15, followed by a simple party in our classroom.  

Pumpkins, witches, bats and things!

We painted pumpkins on Monday, and created some awesome jack-o-lanterns. First we drew our pumpkins, then we painted them, and the last step was creating the faces. 

We made witches too....we loved the crazy hair! Later in the week we read about bats. We made shape bats and wrote about bats in our journals. Our new learning target this week was "I can keep my eyes on the teacher", or on the big screen. Learning how to focus and what to pay attention to during instruction helps us become more independent students. We don't miss directions or learning opportunities when we pay attention to the teacher or lesson. I could tell that many children did this and were successful when they worked on the task. 

We added a new coping skill - "move on" to our list. Move on means the problem is done and over, and we are going forward with our day. We talked about getting back to the green zone after we are upset, so our "move on" symbol is a green arrow. 

Center Time continues to be a time of day where we can learn and practice our social skills. We work on sharing, turn taking, respecting the personal space of our friends, cleaning up calmly, and using toys the correct way. 

We began talking about how to use an calm but assertive voice to communicate our feelings or ask for help. Sometimes students are too aggressive or too passive when they need to ask for help, so we practiced how to ask for help or tell someone to stop doing something. 

We are building our reading/book box stamina...many children are now able to read/look at books quietly for several minutes. This is a great habit to reinforce at home too! We practice looking at one book at a time, looking at/reading each page, and then moving on to the next book. 

Don't forget to sign up online for a Parent Teacher Conference on November 8! 

Scarecrows, Pumpkins and the Fun Run!

We read and wrote about scarecrows and pumpkins this week. Look at some of our great artwork!

We learned about a new coping skill, "count and breathe"...counting and breathing helps buy kids a little time so that they can get calm and think before acting.

So far we have learned these coping skills:

*breathe, *stop-think-choose, *take a break, *get help (raise your hand) *ignore, *self-talk , *coping skill tool box and *count-and-breathe. Ask your child to model some of these at home. It might help to take a photo or draw a picture of the coping skill and hang it up so your child can use that coping skill when he/she feels upset. We always praise children when they try to use a coping skill. 

This week we started some behavioral learning targets - specific things we focus on that will help us become more successful students. Our Learning Target this week was to sit criss cross at group. We are learning to keep our bodies in control during group lessons and instruction. 

We had a lot of fun outside for the Color Fun Run today! We were able to transition nicely right into lunchtime and recess. It was great to see some of our parents there too! Thanks to all who donated to the LLE Color Fun Run! I think we all enjoyed it, even if we didn't want to run or wear our blue T shirt - I was proud of everyone!

Parent Teacher Conferences are between 8:00 am - 6:00 pm on Tuesday, November 8. You will need to go online to sign up for a conference time, unless we have already blocked out an hour for an IEPT. 

Halloween is a half day on Monday, October 31. Children should wear their costume to school that day. We will be in the school parade at 10:15, and have a simple party in our room afterwards. Some parents may wish to watch the parade outside of school, but I will also take photos to post. Parents do not attend the party. However, if you would like to send in a simple snack or drink for our party, we would love it! No nuts/tree nuts please....we love fruit, cheese and crackers, juice etc.  We do not need a lot of candy - I am sure they will get plenty trick or treating! 

Fall Leaves

We read so many wonderful books about fall this week, and wrote about fall in our new October journals. 

We created acorns, squirrels and leaves - our room looks all set for fall now! Lot's of good fine motor practice with these projects. 

We each chose a leaf to investigate and looked at different attributes such as size, shape and color.

In our social skills lessons, we continue to learn how to focus. One new skill we practiced is called self-talk. We can talk to ourselves in a quiet voice ...for example, we might say, "Focus. Ignore Tommy. Keep coloring my paper. What do I need to do... oh yes, color in five circles."  Self-talk is a strategy that students can use to help themselves listen, follow directions and stay on task. Over time, it usually becomes internalized. Your child can use self talk at home too - have him/her use self talk to follow a 2 step direction at home, or when you go to the store or a restaurant.

We also are learning and using another strategy - get help. We need to raise our hand with a quiet mouth if we need help with our school work. We can also get help from an adult if we have a problem on the playground or at Center Time. We practiced using calm words to let an adult know what we need help with. This is a great skill to work on at home too - when our students are able to get help the right way, they will feel less frustrated and more confident. 

We read a story about a girl who was TOO LOUD. We learned that we can use our "whisper voices", our "table talk voices" and our "outside voices". Ask your child to show you these different voices at home, and talk about when each voice might be appropriate for different settings. We have many loud students, but all of them were interested and motivated to practice this! This is why children are so great - they really do love to learn new things, and they feel so proud when they are able to be successful! 

We have a new OT, replacing Mrs. Chrisekos. Mrs. Grad has begun to work with our students who receive OT services. 

On Thursday the Walled Lake Central drum line came through our hallways - we thought it was really cool!