Finally, we're back!

We are finally all back at school after an extra long winter break! We will be busy creating some winter themed art work this week and we will begin a Jan Brett author study.
With all of the cold and snow, it is really important that your child has warm boots, hats, mittens and snow pants for outside recess. It is fine to have your child leave boots and snow pants here at school if you wish. I would also recommend that your child have extra socks and even pants here at school -feet are often wet after recess. Sometimes our classroom can feel chilly, so your child might also like to leave an extra sweatshirt or hoodie here to put on.
This is also the time of year when children get colds and the flu. We try to wipe down all of our tables every day to help reduce the spread of germs. However, if your child has a temperature, has thrown up, or is feeling ill with coughs and aches, they should remain at home. This is best for the sick child, and it helps stop the spread of germs to classmates and staff.  We always welcome donations of boxes of Kleenex for our classroom.
We have been working hard on building friendships and working with a partner -  we have some wonderful kids in this classroom! Our Skills for Learning lesson next week will be focused on showing care and concern for our friends and classmates.

Today we are sending home some Scholastic Book order forms - if you wish to order from them, the orders are due next Friday. You may make one check out for all of your book orders, made out to Scholastic Reading Clubs. 

Our Holiday Breakfast

We loved wearing our pajamas and felt so cozy at our Holiday Breakfast. Here are a few fun pictures!

I hope you all have a wonderful two week break - I am looking forward to spending some relaxing time with my family! I will see your children on January 6, 2014!

New Friends!

We have added two new students so there are 11 of us! Everyone helped to make our new students feel welcome, and we love having them in our class! I always feel that new students give us an opportunity to show kindness, practice friendship skills, and stretch and grow ourselves!

We continued to work on some special holiday crafts and completed a "Polar Express" mini literature unit that helped us learn about characters, settings, problems and solutions.
Our social skills lessons have been focused on the idea that "feedback" is helpful and is meant to be nice. We are learning that we can listen to feedback from a teacher, parent or friend, think about the information that the feedback gives us, and then make a change. Feedback helps us adjust what we are doing so that we can do it better. Even as adults, we need to remind ourselves that accepting feedback gives us more opportunities to grow and be successful!
Our Holiday Breakfast will be on Friday for the children in our room so send your children in a little hungry on Friday! I want to wish all of you a wonderful holiday season and two week vacation with your children -enjoy every minute! I will miss your children during the winter break!

Our Gingerbread Village!

Today we made our wonderful gingerbread houses! It was a lot of fun, and it was a great finish to our gingerbread literature unit. We have read stories about gingerbread men, a gingerbread girl, a gingerbread cowboy and a gingerbread baby! We will enjoy our gingerbread houses here and then send them home before the break.

Just a reminder that our Parent Support Group Meeting is next Wednesday December 11 at 6:30 in our classroom. I hope many of you will be able to join us!

Our HOLIDAY BREAKFAST will be the morning of Friday December 20. We will make pancakes, sausage and juice for our class -this is our gift to them, and something we always love to do. You may send your son to school hungry that day!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed the little mini-break! Last week we finished up our social studies unit about Pilgrims and Indians by making our own butter. We had learned that the Pilgrims had very limited food on the Mayflower and no way to refrigerate or cook it. We enjoyed this snack on crackers!

We began a literature unit all about Gingerbread stories today. We are reading different versions of the many Gingerbread Men/Girl tales and comparing the characters and endings. We learned that a "refrain" is a repeated phrase in a story, so we are noticing the different refrains in each story too. On Friday we will each make our own gingerbread house...pictures to come!

Our old friend, Ginger the Elf, was sitting way up high this morning when we got to school. He even brought us a funny holiday joke! We wonder where he will be tomorrow morning!
In our Social Skills lessons this week we will be talking about how people sometimes think and feel differently about the same situation. Learning that not everyone feels the same way as they do is part of building empathy.
I will have a substitute on Wednesday and Friday afternoons because I am observing students in other buildings.

We have been learning all about the Pilgrims and their journey on the Mayflower. We have read about the conditions on the ship, and what it was like for the Pilgrims when they arrived that first winter. We also have learned about the help that was given to them by the Wampanoag Indians who lived in the area. We have enjoyed making several crafts that relate to this unit - these activities also help us develop fine motor skills. We all chose woodland Indian names, made headbands, and have been busy earning feathers.
Our Skills for Learning social skills lesson was about looking at another person's face or body language for clues to how they may be feeling. It is important for children to recognize these clues - sometimes we need to look at a situation from a viewpoint other than our own and then adjust our actions or behavior. For example, if two boys are playing together at Center Time, and one boy puts his head down and has an angry look on his face, the other boy needs to think about why, and perhaps talk it out. Together, they might be able to resolve the problem -but the upset face/body language needs to be noticed first.
I hope that some of you have been talking with your children about some possible ideas for their Pay It Forward coupon. Loon Lake has received some nice emails of ways children have been doing good things in the world -  holding doors open, raking leaves, baking cookies for a neighbor, even helping with chores at home are all ways they can "pay it forward".
By now you have had a few days with the new daily note format. I hope it is giving you a little better picture of your child's day, and where any problem areas are. I know that although they take more time to fill out, they are giving me more information - and that allows me to work on those problem areas. Since we all want the boys in this classroom to make progress, it is good to know what things we really need to focus on. Thank you for your continued help and support at home!
With the cold weather here, it is important that students have hats, mittens and warm clothes on for recess, and so we will need boots and snow pants. Your child may leave his boots and snow pants here if you wish. Your child does need his name in his boots and snow pants. You may also send extra socks and pants -sometimes feet/pants get wet at recess. Please work on skills like zipping, getting jackets on, putting boots on etc. at home. We really work hard to help our students learn to be as independent as possible, and getting winter clothes on and off is great fine motor practice!
We started another new fine motor activity this week - here are some boys working on pushy pin art -ask your son to tell you about it!

And, to help get our classroom ready for winter, we are changing our "thankful" tree into a snowflake tree!

I am wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving a little early! I know that I am thankful to have all of your sons in my class - teaching them is a joy and an honor! I am also thankful to work with all of the wonderful moms, dads, grandmas and grandpas in this room! Enjoy the long weekend off and the time with your own families!

Just a reminder.... our next Parent Support group evening meeting will be on Wednesday, December 11 - we hope that many parents/grandparents can join us! We will meet from 6:30-7:30 in Room 113.

Weather, math, and feelings....

We have been talking, reading and writing about weather. On Friday we read a book called "Thunder Cake" and baked a thunder cake of our own in a crock pot. Our room sure smelled good!

We work on many math concepts during calendar time. One thing we have talked about is odd and even numbers. We always discuss why a number is odd or even. We made odd and even houses to hang on our bulletin board. We also have been practicing counting by 5's and 10's - we made some turkeys from our hands to help us count.
Our next Skills for Learning lessons focus on empathy. We will be learning how to identify emotions on other peoples' faces and talking a lot about how we are feeling and how other people might be feeling. Our goal will be to help our students express their feelings with words, especially if they need help with something.
Next Wednesday Loon Lake will begin our Pay It Forward Project. Each student will bring home a Pay It Forward card with a number on it. With your help, we hope your son will do an act of kindness for someone and give them the card. The act of kindness can be anonymous if you wish, and you can just leave the card. There is information and some videos about it on our PBIS Blog at http://loonlakeelementarypbs.blogspot.com/ .  I hope you will have fun and I hope it will be a positive way for your child to begin to think about other people.
I will be attending a special education inservice on Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 11 and 12 so there will be a substitute teacher in the room with Mrs. Aldrich and Mrs. Couveau. I would much rather be in the classroom, but sometimes our district requires us to have training on new forms etc.  This is a very nice class of boys, and I know they will do a good job while I am gone.
I want to remind you that Parent Teacher Conferences are on Thursday, November 14 - there is no school for children that day. I will send report cards home with your children on Wednesday, November 13.