Our Loon Lake Student Council has been collecting blankets and slippers and socks to donate to Mott's Children's Hospital. Several of our students brought in things to contribute - look how full the tree and table by the office look!



Ginger has been busy in our classroom too - on Monday we found him flying on a bluebird!

Here he is driving in a van (from our toy cupboard!) with some friends!

Our Skills for Learning lesson this week focused on recognizing when we have "strong feelings" so that we can use a calm down strategy or coping skill. We practiced putting our hands on our tummies and saying, "STOP". Next we can name our feeling, and then ask for help or use another coping skill. By using the "STOP" signal, students are able to interrupt the escalation of emotion, which helps keep the problem small, and allows us to intervene to offer assistance. Here is a picture of a stop sign that we use in our classroom. Mrs. Schnieders also worked with each student to make a stop sign of their own.

We had a new student join our classroom this week, and will be adding one more new friend - for a total of 12 wonderful children in our class!

Next Friday, December 21, we will have our Holiday Breakfast - please send your children in a little hungry for this special event in our classroom! This will be our Holiday Party.

 

 



What An Exciting Week!

So many exciting things happened this week in our classroom! We've been working on many holiday projects and made menorahs and Santas. We learned about the Dutch custom where the children place hay and carrots in their shoes on December 5 and then find little treats the next morning. We left out a pair of wooden shoes and found gold candy coins and candy canes in them the next morning.
We also have our elf, Ginger, back with us. Each day we find Ginger in a new spot. He has been a great motivation for us. In this picture, we found Ginger hanging on our neat work chart. We decided that Ginger wanted to remind us to work neatly.

 

The next day Ginger left us this message about our wonderful work and behavior!

 

On Friday we made our own gingerbread houses. We have them on display in our classroom, but will send them home before the holidays. It was a lot of fun, and a great fine motor task!



Our Skills for Learning Lesson this week was focused on feeling disappointed. We talked about different times when we have felt disappointed, and how our body may feel "uncomfortable" when we are disappointed. For example, we might have an unset tummy or our shoulders might be tense. We also discussed how our heart might beat faster when we are upset or angry. These are all times when a coping skill can be helpful. Some good coping skills to try are: deep breathing, taking a break, using calm words, keeping the problem small (by stopping) and talking to an adult. When we notice a child feeling upset because they didn't get their own way, or they were told "no", we often say to them that they might be having a strong feeling of disappointment and then prompt them to use a coping skill. It seems to help many children calm down when we can guide them in naming their feelings. Learning to tune in to internal physical clues also helps students recognize distressing emotions that might require emotion management (or coping skills!)

We did a really nice writing activity this week about our homes. The children all wrote about what they love about their home, made colorful houses and worked on making beaded snowflakes. You can see their work on our hall bulletin board.

Our next Parent Support Group Meeting is on Thursday, December 6 at 6:30. We'll meet in Ms. Momeni's classroom (room 114, right next to ours). I hope many of you will be able to join us - I love having this extra opportunity to talk and work together with you.

 

The words in the picture above are very important to our classroom - we read them every morning before we enter the classroom. It is a wonderful and powerful way for us to begin our day together - even when we have a rough day, we want your children to know how much they matter to us!

 

Our HOLIDAY BREAKFAST will be on Friday, December 21. This is our treat  to our students, so please send your child in a little hungry that morning! This will be our classroom holiday party.



10 students and a turkey!

Last Friday, one of our students helped make pumpkin bread in our crock pot. This was a reward that he earned from the Fun Run, and he chose to bake for the class and share it with his friends.



Everyone helped make the butter to go with our pumpkin bread. We had to shake and shake to get our cream to become butter!

 
Today, Farmer Schmidt came to our room with her turkey! Roy is a beautiful, big, white turkey who likes to "gobble". We learned that he is a bird, and he has a wattle and snood that change color!

Farmer Schmidt also gave each of us a musical instrument so that we could play in her farm band. You will notice that we have 2 more new students for a total of 10 children in our classroom now!

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.