A short, snowy week...

This week we began a new author study...we are reading books by the author Ezra Jack Keats. The first book we enjoyed was about a boy named Peter and was called, "The Snowy Day". Ezra Jack Keats wrote many books about Peter and his friends. He was one of the first children authors to include diversity in his books, and most of them take place in the city. Many of his books received Caledecott Medals. We made some snowy day pictures of our own. 

On Friday we had our first yoga lesson with Miss Kelly from Lakes Area Youth Assistance. We learned how to do tumble breathing...ask your son to show you how!

We practiced different poses, like the mountain pose and the sun salutation. We also played a fun yoga game too!

We are adding yoga to our coping skill board! 

Polar animals

We talked about the North and South Poles and the equator this week. We learned that polar bears live at the North Pole, or Arctic Circle and penguins live south of the equator. We practiced cutting the corners off of rectangles to create our polar bears. This was a tricky new skill for us! 

We conducted an experiment to see how polar bears are able to swim in freezing Arctic water - we wore a "blubber glove" and compared what it felt like to put our hand into icy water with it on and without it on. We now understand that a thick layer of fat or blubber helps keep polar bears warm. 

We have been enjoying some great books by Todd Parr.

We noticed that he uses very bright colors in his illustrations and that his books have a message...it might be about making mistakes, being yourself, having feelings or feeling fearful. We created our own self portraits "Todd Parr" style. 

We also challenged ourselves to make some awesome drawings of ourselves! 

Reminder...no school on Monday. Next week we will finish up with penguins and begin an Ezra Jack Keats author study. 

Snowmen and winter stories...

Everyone came back from winter break rested and ready to learn! We read all kinds of snowmen stories, and created a few snowmen of our own. 

We have been learning about different story elements, including the characters, the setting, the problem and the solution. We read two Jan Brett books that were perfect for this: "The Hat" and "The Mitten". 

We created the main character in "The Hat" - it was a hedgehog named Hedgie. His problem was that a sock got stuck on his prickles!

We read a story about a girl who kept making snowmen all winter long. When the snowmen melted, she saved some of the water in her freezer. We brought snow into our room, and sure enough, it melted...we put the water in the freezer and it became ice. This was  a great science lesson for us! We decided to let the bowl of water sit out in our room to see what would happen next...some boys predicted that it would evaporate! The next day, our bowl was almost empty! Your son might like to replicate this experiment at home. 

Many of our social skills discussions this week were about empathy and friendship. We compared cotton balls and sandpaper to kind words and mean words to help us think about the things we say to one another. Developing empathy, or looking at things from another person's view, is an important step in social emotional growth! We are practicing talking things through so that we can solve disagreements calmly - the boys are learning that talking helps, and talking about a problem doesn't mean you're in trouble! 

An Exciting Week!

On Monday we worked together to create this cozy snowy night scene - we love how it looks in our room with the lights on!

On Tuesday we worked like little elves creating a very special gift for our families. We can't tell you yet, but we hope you love it! 

On Wednesday we made some paint stick snowmen! 

We had a lot of fun at our Holiday Breakfast!

I want to wish you all a wonderful holiday and hope you all enjoy some family time over the Winter Break!

Connecting feelings....

We began our week with a social skills lesson about anger. We looked at this photograph from our lesson and talked about the clues on his face that show he is angry. We paid special attention to his mouth and frown...one of our new students also noticed that his face was flushed a little. We talked about how feeling angry is an "uncomfortable feeling"-we feel better when we are not angry. This lesson was a perfect lead-in to the book "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" ... we thought maybe the Grinch was mean because he felt lonely and didn't have friends. We made some grumpy faced Grinches to bring home.  

Our new student was a great morning greeter on his first day of school! Our students love this morning routine, and I have noticed that they are becoming more confident and speaking up more to each other! They are working hard at using their classmates names in their greetings as well. 

We have been working on adding two sets of objects in math. We have also been drawing pictures to help us solve story problems in math. 

We used several techniques to create our snowflakes and snow scenes. This was great fine motor practice. 

Thank you to everyone who came in to meet with me for a conference - I loved having the opportunity to talk with you about your child! They have all come far this year, and with your support at home, I know they will continue to grow!

Reminder...Next Friday morning will be our classroom Holiday Breakfast. Also, next week there are some special school spirit days:

Monday - spirit wear or orange and black to show Tiger Pride

Tuesday - pajama day

Wednesday - fancy holiday attire

Friday - holiday sweater or t-shirt 

We have added a Center Time at the start of each day to help us transition in from home to school. Our students really enjoy starting the day building/creating/playing with a special Center! All of our Centers help develop fine motor skills too. 

We created some really cute Santas on Monday, and added reindeer on Tuesday. We learned that reindeer are herbivores and that their ankles make a clicking sound when the walk and run! 

We learned about some Dutch customs on Wednesday. In the Netherlands, St. Nicholas comes on the evening of December 5 - the Dutch children leave carrots and hay in their shoes for St. Nicholas' horse, and he leaves them some little treats in their shoes. Some of us tried on some wooden shoes, we made a wooden shoe art project...and got some traditional Dutch treats!

We made some funny elves on Friday - we have had so much fun with these art activities this week. We have also enjoyed many great holiday books. A new student visited our classroom on Friday and made an elf with us! We are happy to be a wonderful class of 10 great boys!

Our social skills lessons continued to focus on "expressing our feelings with calm words". We reviewed the letter Z, and began adding two numbers in our work. 

Our class is visiting the Holiday Gift Shop on Monday morning. An envelope went home for money if your child wishes to shop. It is not necessary to send a lot of money, but your child may enjoy shopping for a gift or two. 

*Reminders:

Next Thursday is an early release 1/2 day for Parent Teacher Conferences. My conference schedule is very full, so I will work hard to stay on time with each one. I am looking forward to meeting with you all! I will send home printed report cards on Wednesday. 

Our Holiday Breakfast is on Friday December 21 in our classroom. This will be our Holiday Party.