Our Caterpillars

Our 5 little caterpillars arrived on Thursday and were 1 cm. long. On Friday they measured 1 1/2 cm. and were already eating the green, mushed up leaves in the bottom of their container.

We predicted that they would eat and grow all weekend, and on Monday we observed and measured them again. Wow - they were much bigger! Today our caterpillars were 2 1/2 cm. long and were thicker.

 

*Our Field Trip permission slips are coming home. Please fill them out and send them back. The cost is $5.00 to help cover the cost of the school bus. Even if you are not able to send in the money, just return the permission slip - that is the most important thing. I incorrectly wrote that our trip was on May 15, but the CORRECT FIELD TRIP DATE is MAY 16.  We are all looking forward to this exciting day!

 

Although we are getting nearer to the end of the school year, we could still use some donations of kleenex boxes and canisters of disinfecting wipes. We have a lot of colds and allergies this time of year, and children need kleenex. We try to wipe down all table surfaces with the disinfecting wipes each day.

Science and Friendships

Our rain forest is so green and full of animals now! We have monkeys, toucans, tree frogs and slow moving sloths. We will be adding several other animals this week. In addition to creating the animals for our rain forest, we are also making a rain forest book. Just like our nocturnal animal books, these are directed art activities designed to develop attention and focus, memory skills and eye hand coordination. The children need to listen and watch carefully, remember the multiple steps, and then use the proper sizes of construction paper to create the animal and habitat without a tracer. I am so impressed at their skill development, their ability to organize themselves and to complete the steps correctly. Real progress!  When I teach these lessons I always remind the children that these focusing and organizing skills are the same skills they will use when they attend a math class or other academic class in general education.
We learned and practiced how to "invite someone to play" in our Skills for Learning lesson. We talked about how it is important to think about how someone might feel if they aren't asked to join in, and to try to include others. Friendship building has been an important focus in our classroom this year - I have noticed many friendly gestures, apologies, sharing and helping others lately. We have also been learning some songs that you will all hear at our Friendship Celebration -2:00 on Wednesday, May 29! We are so excited to share them with you and hope that many of you will be able to attend. If you cannot join us, perhaps a grandparent or other special person can.
Our Painted Lady caterpillars are in transit, and should arrive soon! We will begin our Insect Life Cycle unit soon, once we finish up with the rain forest. This unit will also be supported by our Field Trip experience at the WL Outdoor Center on May 15. Permission slips will be sent home -we will take a school bus and eat our lunch at the Outdoor Center that day.
Last but not least, our last Parent Support Group meeting is this Wednesday at 6:30. All parents, grandparents,  or caregivers are welcome.

Spring!

I hope you all had a wonderful Spring Break! This week we are welcoming a new student to our classroom. We are excited to have a new friend in our group.

We learned about how to take care of the Earth and how to keep it clean and safe from pollution. We made our Earth bulletin board from some recycled materials.
We welcomed spring with a little robin art project and poem. We talked about spring rain and weather, and used a glyph to create some umbrellas.
We have a mini rain forest in our classroom! Hanging from our ceiling, right where we sit for group time, is our rain forest canopy. We love it! The children will be learning all about the rain forest environment and the animals and plants that live there over the next few weeks.

 

Please note that we have changed the date for our Parent Support Group meeting -it will be held on April 24 at 6:30 (not on April 25). We hope this will still work for you all!

We also have some very exciting news! Ms.Momeni submitted another mini grant proposal for our two classrooms to go to The WL Outdoor Center in May, and we were awarded the mini grant by the WL Foundation for Excellence! We will take a school bus to The Outdoor Center on Thursday, May 16. Our class will participate in several  science classes there -Spiders, Insects and Nocturnal Animals. We will take sack lunches with us to eat at the Outdoor Center. The mini-grant will help offset the cost of the field trip and school bus, but we still need to charge a small feel for the trip.

Spring Time Fun!

This week we finished up our Nocturnal Animals Unit, and had time for some spring time fun! We made yummy bird nest snacks to eat. They were delicious!

We arrived at school on Thursday to find some little treats on our desks - that was a fun surprise!

We thought it was really fun to wear our pajamas to school on Thursday - we read a lot of books and enjoyed feeling cozy!

I hope you all have a wonderful Spring Break - hopefully, the weather will warm up and you will be able to have some outside fun with your children. I will be excited to see everyone back after the break!

We are growing in size!

We took this photo of almost all of us last week - we wanted to send a picture to a new student who will be joining us after Spring Break.  He will be our 14th student, and we are excited to be welcoming him. We are certainly a much bigger group now than we were in the fall - having more children in our classroom gives us more opportunities to practice coping skills and develop friendships. We also are practicing how to wait for our turn patiently, and how to get the attention of the teachers the correct way. We made a list of things that will get the attention of the teachers. Here are some of the ideas the kids came up with:
     * Raise your hand quietly
     * Listen
     * Follow directions - say, "OK"
     * Use a coping skill
     * Have a friendly face and friendly words
This week we will complete our Nocturnal Animal books and the children will bring them home to you. Please take a little time to look them over with your children -they worked very hard on them, and I am so pleased with their efforts. After Spring Break we will get ready for Earth Day, our Rainforest Unit and then a unit about Insect Life Cycles.

*Thursday is Pajama Day for March is Reading Month. Thursday is also our Block Recess day, so you may want to send warm pants to wear outside for that longer recess.

If-then thinking and nocturnal animals

In our Skills for Learning lessons we have been practicing how to solve problems and how to handle anger and frustration. We have learned that we need to STOP and say the problem. We need to Think of possible solutions, before we act. We need to Explore the consequences, and then Pick the one that is best for us. To help us understand this, we have been reading and talking about our brain and all of the jobs our brain does for us. We learned that sometimes the "feeling" part of our brain wants to run the show. When this happens, we need to slow down, think and then make a good choice. Thinking  and choosing happen in a different part of the brain -we are working hard to exercise and strengthen those parts! Often students will only think of one solution and act on it without thinking through what might happen. You can practice If-then thinking with your child at home too - help your child think about possible solutions to a problem situation. Practice: If you choose that solution, then what will happen?

We are really working hard during our science lessons about nocturnal animals and making a special book about some of the animals. This may seem to be just an art activity, but it is so much more! The children are given as many as 12 different sized construction paper shapes. They really have to focus -watch, listen and THINK- as I show them how to cut each piece and assemble it to make the animal. I hang up the example for a visual reminder, but they have to REMEMBER what I showed them and then do their own. The children enjoy this and have done a great job. They don't realize that they are strengthening their brains- they are learning how to get new instruction and practicing how to stay organized and follow directions. These are some of the skills that our students need in order to be successful in general education classes during academic classes they may participate in. 

March Blew In!

We learned this poem this week:
     March roars in like a lion
     With a bluster and a slam!
     And tiptoes out gently
     Like a quiet little lamb.

Ms. Marlowe came and saw our poem and turned it into a song for us!
Here are our lions and lambs...we hope to see lamb weather before too long!

We also began our Day/Night and nocturnal animal unit this week. We asked Miss Vella what a "nocturne" was and learned that it is a piece of night music. We will be reading and learning about all kinds of nocturnal animals in the weeks ahead, and making a special nocturnal animal booklet.

In our Skills for Learning lesson we learned that it is important to calm down first before you solve a problem. Then you need to use words to solve the problem. We learned that it is important to think of lots of solutions to the problem - not just one!  We have been doing a lot of role plays and even diagrams of how we can solve a problem. We anticipate when we might need to calm down and solve a problem, and which coping skill will help us calm down. Many children have begun to really use these strategies and have moved up on our Coping Skills Rubric!