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!