Penguins, Walrus, Groundhogs and Accepting Feedback

We have been learning about feedback. Feedback is usually helpful - it gives us an idea about how we can do things differently to have more success. We are practicing accepting feedback and making a change. We also are continuing our work with "size of the problem".
We made some penguins and walruses this week as we completed our polar animal science unit.

We are getting ready for February and Valentine's Day by learning a new poem. We will make our mailboxes here at school. Our party will be on Friday, February 14. Students may bring their valentines cards anytime from next Friday on. They only need to sign their own names on their cards - we have 10 boys in our classroom. If you'd like to send in juice, a treat or snack for our party, just let me know!  We have no food allergies. 

We love building with our center toys and zones tubs!!!!

Snow and Polar Animals

We gathered some snow on Monday and brought it inside. We watched and noticed that after awhile it melted. 

We noticed that there were little pieces of dirt in the water. We put the bag of water in our freezer...and observed that it was ice!

We decided to melt that ice, and put the water in a bowl. We marked the bowl and watched to see what would happen to our water. Some boys predicted that it would "evaporate". 

We introduced a new coping skill this week called "Size of the Problem". This is a coping skill that helps us match the size of our reaction to the size of the problem. The bottom graphic compares problems to animal sizes...we are beginning to understand that most problems are "glitches" (mouse sized problems). Glitches and small problems are easy to solve in a short time - we don't need to have a big reaction with these problems. 

We began learning about polar animals. We learned that penguins live south of the equator and that many live at the South Pole. Penguins are birds that cannot fly, but are very good swimmers. Polar bears live at the North Pole and are mammals who also swim well. 

We read about penguins and learned that some authors "label" pictures- we drew and labeled penguins in our journals. 

On Friday we conducted a science experiment with ice cold water and a "blubber glove". We learned that the blubber glove and the blubber on polar bears and penguins helps to keep them warm when they swim in icy water. 

We continued to enjoy our Center Time activities. 

Snowy books and snowy art

We began our week by reading "The Snowy Day" and discussing the author, Ezra Jack Keats. He wrote this story about a boy named Peter who went out to play in the snow. He even tried to save a snowball in his pocket! Ask your son what happened to the snowball. 
 
 We created our own Peter art work for the hallway. 

We used marshmallows to paint snowmen - that was fun! And we had a new student join our class on Thursday - now we have 10 boys in our class!

We continued to work on the coping skill "change your plan" this week, and practiced using this coping skill when things didn't go our way or as we expected. We talked about feeling "frustrated" and how that is an uncomfortable feeling to have. Feeling uncomfortable is a clue that you might need to use a coping skill to calm down. We practiced naming our feelings. On Thursday afternoon we went to an all school assembly. The assembly was about using coping skills to manage our emotions. 

Miss Mattson has been working with all of the students and we are enjoying having her in our room!

Stay warm this weekend, and enjoy the snow if you can! Remember, there is no school on Monday. We'll see the boys back on Tuesday. Next week we will begin learning about some polar animals. 

Welcome to 2020!

We welcomed our student teacher, Miss Mattson, to our classroom on Monday. She will be with us until February break - we're excited to have her as part of our classroom!

Since there wasn't any real snow, we had to use our imaginations this week for all of the winter themed stories and art work we did. We drew snowmen pictures on Monday, and painted them over with a special "magic potion" to give them a frosty look. 

We read a book about a snowplow and created some cool snowplow artwork. 

We read two Jan Brett books, "The Mitten" and "The Hat" - the pictures in these books have a lot of detail, and we liked how funny the animals were. 

We learned a new coping skill this week, called "Change your Plan". This is a good coping skill to use when you can't get what you want or you feel disappointed about something. In the picture, the boy had planned to go outside for recess, but it was raining. He changed his plan to do something fun inside instead. 

We also talked about feeling "worried" and what coping skills might help us feel better. Some students named "deep breathing" and "get adult help" or "bump in a happy thought". Our students have learned a lot of coping skills - now we are really working on using them. 

We created some big snowmen for our hallway board.