This week is World Kindness Week - we have been learning and practicing different ways that we can show kindness to others. We put up photos of us smiling (and of some smiling animals!) in the hallway outside of our classroom. We are sharing our smiles with others - we look and act friendly!

 

We continued to learn about Pilgrims and Indians, and this week we learned about the Mayflower and the difficult, 63 day voyage the Pilgrims made. It has been surprising to our students to see pictures of life in the Pilgrim days - no electricity, no running water, and no schools at first.

 

We were able to read another fairy tale this week, "Rapunzel". We are getting much better at identifying story elements such as setting, problem, and characters.

 

The Student Council is collecting canned foods for a Food Drive. This fits in wonderfully with World Kindness Week and with our Skills for Learning lesson about caring and compassion this week. Your child may like to bring in a can of food or a box of cereal for our Food Drive.



On Friday, we're making a special crock-pot baking recipe and making our own butter to go with it!

Native Americans, headbands and beans!

This week we began to talk about Native American Indians who lived in Michigan long ago. We read several Native American legends and compared them to some of the fairy tales we have been reading. We read "The Rough Faced Girl" and understood that it was yet another version of a Cinderella tale! We also enjoyed hearing "The Loon's Necklace" and "Rainbow Crow". We looked at some Indian corn, and set an ear of it in water to see if it will sprout. Some of our beans are beginning to sprout in our sprout houses - they are on a cold window, so they have been slow to get started.

 We have begun to earn our first feathers for our headbands. And we have been very excited to see some little trinkets outside of our fairy door. We found a tiny headband and a cornhusk doll!

Next Thursday is our Parent Teacher conference day. I look forward to seeing many of you then. I will send home a paper copy of your child's report card next Wednesday in their folder.
Our skill for learning lesson this week focused on accidents. We learned how people might feel if we do something (even by accident) and we learned respectful things to do and say when things happen by accident. It is important for our students to acknowledge a problem and take responsibility for fixing it up.
We have another new student in our classroom -  everyone has made him feel welcome!

A Very Busy Week!

Last Friday was such a fun day! Even though it was raining in the morning, we still enjoyed the Fun Run in the gym. We all wore our Fun Run T-shirts.



We had a great time wearing our costumes in the Halloween parade, and we enjoyed some very yummy snacks and treats during our party!

This week we read several versions of  "Jack and the Beanstalk". We painted a big beanstalk for our room and turned it into a number line so we could practice counting by 10 all the way up to 120. We also made some "sprout houses" and planted some bean seeds in baggies with wet cotton balls. We're watching to see if they will sprout.

We had a special treat on Wednesday morning for  our snack time. We cooked up some yummy pumpkin pancakes.

Next week, we will take a pause in our fairy tale unit to learn a little about Pilgrims and Native American Indians. We'll make headbands and choose our own Native American names - each day we will earn a special feather for a special behavior. Our first feather, for Wednesday Nov. 7, is the "quiet worker" feather. I will send home a note and list of the feather behaviors this week.

In our Skills for Learning lesson this week we talked more about how feelings work and how people can change their feelings. Two special skills that we focused on were "welcoming" and "inviting" others in. These are great friendship building skills. We had a real life chance to practice these skills this week as we welcomed our new kindergarten student to our classroom. 



We have a fairy door in our room!

Last Friday, we had a big surprise in our room! When we came up to group, we noticed a tiny, little door. We did not know what it was, or who was behind it. We wrote a note and put it up by the little door.

On Monday, we found a tiny little envelope by the door! The writing was really small, but we were able to read it. We found out that two fairies, named Nissa and Dewdrop, live there! They told us that they like our cozy, quiet classroom and that they love to listen to our music and singing. They wrote another note asking us about our coping skills - they wanted us to explain them so that they could try them out too.

  

This week we began our Fairy Tale unit. We learned that fairy tales have magic and both evil and kind characters. Usually, fairy tales begin with "once upon a time" and they almost always have a happy ending. We read the traditional version of Cinderella, and then compared it to an Indonesian version (with a crocodile in it) and a cowgirl version. 

This week in our Skills for Learning lesson we learned that people can have different feelings about the same thing. Recognizing that people can feel and think different things about the same situation is an important part of social perspective taking. We played some games and watched some children on a DVD to help us understand this concept.

We had a great Parent Support Group Meeting last Thursday evening. I always love having this time to talk with our families about issues that are important to all of us. We plan to meet again on Thursday, December 6 at 6:30 in Room 114. I hope that many of you will plan to join us - our meetings are meant to be supportive and a way to share strategies that will help the children in this program. 

Fire Safety and Handling Frustration

We spent several days this week talking about fire safety and firefighters. We read many books about firefighters, and wrote about their gear and equipment in our journals. On Wednesday, Mr. Ellis came in with some of his firefighter gear and everyone was able to try it all on. It was very heavy to wear!

We prepared a little snack this week -pumpkin pudding. It was fun to stir the ingredients together.

We talked about frustration during our skills for learning lessons. We are beginning to notice clues that someone else is frustrated, and how we can help. More importantly, the children are beginning to understand the clues that THEY are feeling frustrated. This is the time that a coping skill can help. Students suggested "deep breathing",  "take a break", and "get adult help" as good coping skill choices. Some older students also named "self-talk" and "bump it out". We can help children actually use coping skills :
           *anticipate when something might be frustrating, and rehearse which coping skill to use
           *prompt your child to use a coping skill during the frustrating moment
           *praise your child for his/her attempt to use a coping skill
           *model using a coping skill when you feel frustrated
Sometimes, we as parents, want to help our children avoid frustration. But, frustration is a wonderful opportunity to practice newly learned coping skills. Feeling frustrated is part of learning new and challenging things -we are working hard to help give your child tools to use, so welcome those opportunities to practice them.

Don't forget - our Parent Support Group Meeting is this Thursday at 6:30 in Room 113. Hope you can come!

Owls and Empathy

This week our Skills for Learning lesson was about identifying feelings -both in ourselves and in others. We practiced matching facial expressions with the correct feeling, and we talked about how important it is to notice the "look" on someone's face so that we can think about how that person may be feeling. This skill is a beginning step in developing empathy. I have noticed more examples of empathy with our students this year, which shows that some students are developing a more mature awareness of feelings. It is an important skill for behavioral change as well. When students are able to identify the facial expression and feeling that another person has, they can use that information to adjust their own behavior. We will have many more lessons on this topic in weeks to come.

We spent several days talking and learning about owls. Our vocabulary included words such as nocturnal, bird, feathers, prey, roost and owlets. Ask your child to tell you all about owls!

I made a mistake last week in our blog! Our Parent Support Group meeting will be next Thursday, October 18 at 6:30-7:30. I hope many of you will come and join us - we will meet in our classroom for this first meeting.

I wanted to let you all know just how much we enjoy working with your children! This class is very special -it is exciting to see how they are using coping skills and adjusting their thinking in order to solve a problem.  Below is a fun photo of our hallway bulletin board -all of the kids are inside the jack-o-lantern!

Happy Halloween from Room 113 - all in a pumpkin shell!

Pumpkins and Appleheads!

We finished all of our apple head people and they look so cute. We are working on writing stories about our people now.
This week we read about pumpkins, learned about the life cycle of a pumpkin and made pumpkins. Our classroom looks ready for fall!
We practiced being assertive when we need to ask for help. We learned that we need to use a calm voice and respectful words. Sometimes we need to wait while an adult finishes helping someone else.
We have begun to work on learning how to write our last names. We will also be working on learning our phone numbers, addresses and birthdates. This is something that you could also work on with your child at home. It will take time and practice - I would suggest that you work on one thing at a time.
This year our school will have our Halloween parade and party, along with the Fun Run, on Friday October 26. Your children should bring a costume to school (not wear it) on October 26. Our school parade will be in the afternoon, and we will have a simple Halloween party afterwards. If you would like to send in something to eat or drink for our party, just let me know.
Our first Parent Support Group meeting will be held in our classroom on Thursday October 18 at 7:00. I hope many of you will be able to join us!

 

On Friday, we ended our week with a visit from Miss Qonja. She read a great story to us and was able to talk with the kids about the book. It was wonderful to have her spend time with us!