Gingerbread Stories

This week we began reading a variety of "Gingerbread" stories. We learned that there are many different endings for these stories, and there are multiple settings and characters in them. We created gingerbread boys, gingerbread houses and even the Fox who ate the gingerbread boy in some of the stories. We discovered that the Fox did not always get to eat the gingerbread man!

On Friday, we designed gingerbread houses of our own! 

In our social skills lessons we read a story about a bear who felt scared and discussed how "scared" is an uncomfortable feeling. We reflected on coping skills we know already that can be used when we feel scared, including "get adult help", "deep breathing" and "bump in a happy thought". This book was a great opportunity to introduce a new coping skill  - "express your feelings with words". We want our students to understand that calm words work, and screaming/yelling/grabbing does not work, so it is helpful to acknowledge efforts to use words. 

We introduced the letters W and X this week. 

A few reminders:

Students need boots, snowpants, hats and mittens for the playground. It is very helpful if you can write names inside the boots (maybe on the tag?). We are teaching our students to stand their boots up neatly under their coat hook, and to hang up their coats and snowpants - you can expect this from them at home as well! We also need shoes for in the classroom and to wear in the gym, so students need to bring them when they wear boots to school. 

On Dec. 10, we will visit the Holiday Gift Shop here at school. Envelopes went home already for money if your child wishes to make some purchases. 

Parent Teacher Conferences are on Dec. 13 - this is also an early release 1/2 day for students. You are all already scheduled for a conference or IEPT time - I am looking forward to seeing you! I will send home a printed copy of your child's report card and their progress on IEPT goals and objectives on Dec. 12. 

Dec. 21 is our Holiday Breakfast- our class Holiday Party is actually a classroom breakfast. We will enjoy a simple breakfast together that morning. (We do not do a student gift exchange in our room.) 

Animals in Winter

This week we read several books about animals in winter. We learned that some animals hibernate, some migrate and some animals get ready for winter by gathering food or growing warmer coats of fur. We made some hibernating bears for a cave and some cardinals who stay active during winters in Michigan. 

After reading "Time to Sleep", we painted some bears and used leaves to make prints on our paper.

We followed a recipe to make pumpkin pudding for a Thanksgiving snack. 

We continued to work on our social skills theme of kindness, and created this kindness quilt based on the book, "The Kindness Quilt". We drew pictures of kind things we can do, and we hope our kindness will spread! When we have behavior problems to discuss, we try to include a conversation about how the other person/people might have felt about our behavior. Did our action leave them with a kind feeling? This helps our students begin to develop empathy and the ability to look at things from another person's viewpoint.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! We will see our students back on Monday when we will begin our Gingerbread Unit! 

The Pilgrims and the Native American Indians

This week we learned many interesting things about the Pilgrims and their voyage on the Mayflower. We read books that told about the difficult voyage, the storm and what life was like when the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock.

We also read about the Wampanoag Indians who helped the Pilgrims. We made Native American Indians in fishing canoes.

We enjoyed listening to two more Native American legends from the woodland Indian tribes. "The Rough Face Girl" is a retelling of the Cinderella story, and "The Rainbow Crow" which is a Lenape Indian tale. 

A focus of many of our discussions and read alouds has been kindness. We have talked about kind words, kind hands and kind actions. One of our headband feathers was for kind words. 
We continue to work on sight words and letters. Our letters this week were S and T. 

Reminder - students need boots and snowpants for the playground. They also need gloves and hats...it is helpful to send an extra pair of gloves in case one pair gets wet at our first recess. 

We have had a visitor at our window...and sometimes he gets into our bird feeder to eat the sunflower seeds! We discussed how he is getting ready for winter when food will be scarce for him. 

Turkeys!!!

We had a lot of fun with turkeys this week! We learned about real turkeys and read some silly, fiction books about turkeys. We learned a turkey poem, which gave us practice with rhyming words. 

Our letters were Q and R. 
We also began a social studies unit about the Pilgrims and the Native American Indians. We read our first Native American legend, "The Loon's Necklace" and created loons of our own.

We looked at some Indian corn and decided to see if we could get our corn to sprout...we put it in a little water and will watch what happens. 

We made headbands to wear next week while we "earn" feathers for specific behaviors. We used colored shapes to create patterns on our headbands, and chose Native American names to use. 

Our feathers will be for hallway behavior- Monday, group time behavior-Tuesday, using kind words-Wednesday, neat work-Thursday and being a quiet worker-Friday. 
With the snow starting, kids will need mittens, hats, boots and snow pants. They may leave snow pants at school if you wish. Please try to put names in the snow pants and boots. To celebrate the snow, we made some mittens and put up some snowflakes! 

Our Field Trip to the Outdoor Center

Even though we had a little rain today, we had a wonderful field trip to the WL Outdoor Center. Our bus driver, Ms. Cookie, picked us up along with the students from the Loon Lake Elementary programs. Our class learned about trees and birds. We looked at things birds can eat, such as seeds, pinecones and berries and we used real logs to build structures for animals to live in. 

We looked at different types of trees outside, including pine trees, trees with leaves turning colors and trees with different types of bark. Some bark was rough and the birch tree had bark that was peeling. 

We looked at some stuffed birds close up - we noticed their feet, feathers, beaks and bills, and where their eyes were. We made pinecone birdfeeders to take home. 

We are grateful for the support of the WL Foundation for Excellence who helped fund this fantastic field trip, and to the staff at the WL Outdoor Education Center who worked hard to make sure our students had a positive learning experience today! 

We were excited to learn about birds because this morning we added our own birdfeeder to our classroom window - we sure hope birds come to eat so we can watch them!