Winter

We have been reading many books about winter and turning our classroom into a winter wonderland. Here are a few of our art creations...

We also learned about how some animals hibernate in the winter months. We made bears in a cave, read about bears, and wrote about bears in our journals. 

We learned about "self-talk" in our social skills lessons, and added "self talk" to our coping skill board. Self talk for learning can be a powerful tool to help students remember directions and to stay focused. Self talk is when we use positive words to remind ourselves about what we need to do. It can also be used to reassure ourselves when we feel anxious. Our class really enjoys "speech bubbles" and "thought bubbles"- we can put our self-talk into pictures to help remind us of what we need to say. 

In another social skills lesson we talked about HOW to ask for help. We need to ask for help assertively, but not too aggressively. Sometimes students hesitate to ask for help or are too passive. We practiced raising our hands and asking for help with a clear voice and no screaming or yelling. 

We added some new break time "Tubs" to our routine - most of these activities involving building and developing fine motor skills.