Penguins and fairy tales....

We finished up our penguin study with a science experiment to show how blubber helps Emperor Penguins stay warm in Antarctica. We filled a container with ice and cold water....we could hardly keep our hand in it!

Then we took turns wearing a "blubber glove" - a double layered glove filled with shortening (the blubber). We had no difficulty keeping our hand in the ice water with the blubber to insulate it! Of course, we wrote about our experiment in our journals. 

Now that we have learned a lot about penguins, we are moving on to a huge fairy tale unit! Albert Einstein said, "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." This week we learned that fairy tales have specific traits, including magic, special beginnings (Once upon a time...), talking animals, royalty and good/evil characters. We read several versions of "Red Riding Hood" and were able to name the good/evil characters and we noticed it had talking animals and a "once upon a time" beginning. We also read a version called "Red Riding Hood and the Sweet Little Wolf" which helped us understand things from a different perspective. We made Red Riding Hood, her basket and the wolf! 

Don't forget...next Wednesday is a 1/2 day and it is Global School Play Day. Your child may bring one toy from home to use during Centers that day. 

February also begins kindness and empathy month at Loon Lake. We will attend an assembly on February 6 to hear from a local high school student and his project to help the homeless and those who live in shelters. Caleb White is a WL student who began this project several years ago.  Loon Lake will have a penny drive next week and children are welcome to bring their spare pennies/coins to school - all of the money raised will go to Caleb for the Caleb White Project. 

Penguins

We spent some time learning and reading about penguins this week. We made all kinds of penguins for our classroom! We wrote about penguins in our journal and added scientific pictures and descriptions, such as "krill" and "bristle tongue" to our work. 

In addition to reading many non-fiction penguin books, we ended the week by reading several "Tacky" the penguin fiction books. These were longer stories, and the class enjoyed them a lot. We learned that Tacky was different from all of the other penguins, but different was a good and helpful thing. We made our own Tacky penguins for our hallway bulletin board! 

 


We continued to work on "the size of the problem" and on identifying what zone we felt our body was in. We also had some discussions about why might feel a certain way, or be in a certain zone. Whenever we feel like we are in the yellow or red zone, we want to use a coping skill. 

We made a list of Dud or not coping skills. These are things that keep us in the red zone, they don't work, they can cause danger and they get us in trouble. We are working hard on NOT choosing "Dud" behaviors. We want to choose something from our green zone coping skill board. 

Next week we will finish up penguins and begin a HUGE fairy tale unit! 

Snow stories and a mini author study...

This week we read two books written by Jan Brett. The Mitten and The Hat were perfect books to look for patterns and to use to compare and contrast story events. We enjoyed creating the silly hedgehog in The Hat who wore a sock on his head, and we made and wrote about hats of our own. The Mitten is a familiar story to our class, and they loved hearing about the animals who tried to fit inside a mitten. 

Some other favorite snowmen books included Snowmen at Night - we used our imaginations to write about what our snowmen might do if they could come alive. Snowmen All Year helped us think about different seasons and the weather. We used marshmallows to paint these snowmen...

Some of us worked on decomposing numbers with buttons on snowmen...

 


We looked over all of our photos from the Science Alive visit last Friday and wrote about our favorite animal....ask your child to tell you about the sloth, alligator, python, African frog, or the chinchilla! We loved them all!

We worked on a new coping skill called size of the problem. I often observe that our students have a huge reaction to a small problem. We are beginning to look at what the problem is and using this chart to decide how to match our reaction to the size of the problem. This is a hard concept, and we will use this chart a lot over the next few weeks to work on this. We talked about how most problems are really only a "tiny glitch" or a "little problem". They are short problems, easy to solve and don't involve danger. We don't need to scream or cry - we can solve them. 

Looking ahead...next week we'll learn about penguins! 

On Wednesday February 1, we will join Loon Lake and many other schools in the Global School Play Day. We will be working, but on this special day, your child may bring in one favorite toy to use during our Center Time. 

On Tuesday February 14 we will celebrate Valentine's Day in our classroom. We will make our valentines mailboxes at school. Children are encouraged to bring 15 valentines for classmates. They should sign their cards with their own names so that their classmates know who each card is from. However, it is easiest to pass them out if the DO NOT WRITE A CLASSMATE'S NAME on the outside of the card. For that reason, I am not sending a list of names. Just have your child bring his cards, and he/she will put one in each classmate's mailbox bag. We would love any donations for our party of juice, valentine's day plates or snacks such as fruit, cheese, crackers, yogurt etc... (no nut products please) 

Happy New Year!

It was a fast week, but we packed a lot of fun and learning into it!
We reviewed the zones and talked about how the green zone feels the best - and friends feel good around us when we are in the green zone. We are calm, focused and ready to learn in the green zone. We also talked about the red zone - our friends are not comfortable around us when we are yelling, angry or out of control. It is easy to get a check mark in the red zone. We added some new zones pictures to help us. 

We learned a new coping skill this week - it was actually suggested by one of our own classmates! "Give it a try" is great to use when you don't like what your mom packed for snack, but it is also good to use when your work seems hard, or the teacher didn't choose the game or story you wanted. 

We read many snow themed books and stories and created some beautiful art. We made many connections with Peter, the boy in "The Snowy Day". We began writing in our new January journals.

In the afternoon, we had a very exciting visit from Science Alive - I think these pictures tell you the full story! 

It will be very hard to beat this PTA sponsored Science Alive visit next week, but we will continue to work on snow themed literature and activities. Thank you for sending in boots, snow pants, hats and gloves for recess! After reading about snow and snowmen, our class is ready for the real thing!