More about the ocean...

This week we learned about crabs, oysters and sea turtles. We made a very tricky red crab and painted some beautiful hermit crabs. We had to listen to the story "A House for Hermit Crab" by Eric Carle, and remember what sea animals decorated the crab's shell. We did this by closing our "speech bubble" and opening our "thinking bubble".  We had to hold all those things in our brains during the story and then use them for our artwork. Every single student did this beautifully!

In our social skills lessons we talked about making friends. We learned that the word empathy means thinking about and understanding another person's feelings. We can use empathy to think about friendly behaviors - smiling, saying "hi" and inviting friends to play. This friendly bunch is getting ready for block recess!  

We practiced friendship skills during partner Center Time too...we share, take turns fairly, and talk things out. 

Two important upcoming events are:

* Our last Parent Support Group Meeting on Tuesday May 12 at 6:15  (note- we are starting 15 minutes later than usual this time). 

* Our Spring Celebration Program on Tuesday June 2 at 2:00 - we hope you can join us as we share some of our learning about the zones!

All about the Ocean...

This week we began our Ocean/Sea Life unit. We learned that fish have gills and scales and that they are cold-blooded. We have lungs and skin and are warm blooded. Fish always keep their eyes open, and many fish lay eggs. We made some neat fish prints for our board using paint and a large, rubber fish. This is called "gyotaku"- the Japanese word for fish rubbings.

We also learned about squid, jelly fish and sea horses. We are reading, writing and creating art every day in this unit! Your children have learned a lot - ask them to tell you about jelly fish and seahorses! Some words your children have been using in their writing are tentacles, pouch, fins, tails, and gills. Many children are labeling their drawings,  just like scientists.
On Friday we did some tie-dye art for earth day and talked about recycling and pollution.

 In our social skills lessons this week we focused on paying attention to our own personal zone and using a coping skill when things are hard or we feel frustrated. Your children know so many wonderful coping skills...using them is the next big step! When we are going to do some hard work, or make a challenging transition here, we talk about what that might feel like and what coping skill we might want to use. For example, cutting out our sea horses was tricky -- we planned ahead before we even tried to do it so that we had a coping skill ready to use for the hard part. We are also working hard to reduce grumbling, whining and "drama" when we hear a direction we don't like. These are smart children and they truly want to look and sound their best - so we are work hard on this every day!
I am happy to announce that we will have one more Parent Support Group Meeting this year! Our last meeting will be on Tuesday May 12 at 6:00. I hope you will consider joining us - we plan to talk about the summer time, using the Zones at home, and transitions.

Welcoming a new friend and practicing problem solving skills!

Last week we completed our Fairy Tale unit with another STEM activity - bridge building! We reviewed what we learned about working with partners when we built pigs houses, and then we worked with new partners to build bridges. This time we had a time limit. After we finished our bridges, we tested them out with some small animals. When a bridge worked well, we looked at it together so that we could learn why it worked well - we learned that sharing ideas and talking to our partners helped us build stronger bridges.

We have a new student joining our class this week - now we have 11 wonderful classmates! 

In our Social Skills lesson we learned about problem solving. We practiced: 1. naming the problem, 2. thinking about solutions and 3. picking a solution to try. This is an important skill to practice- research shows that problem-solvers get along better with peers and have fewer conflicts and problems with aggression. It is important for our students to really think about their possible solutions before taking action - we want them to choose a solution that helps keep the problem small, not make it bigger. 

**Remember that Thursday is pajama day at Loon Lake! Your child may wear his/her pjs to school. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Spring Break! We will begin a big Ocean Unit in science when we return from our break. 

Our Bowling Trip

We had a wonderful time at Wonderland Bowling Lanes. Everyone was able to bowl two games - we practiced taking turns, cheering our classmates on and following directions. It was a very successful field trip! The pictures tell the story...

 

 

 

 

 

We are amazed at the changes in our bean plants this week! We observed that they lean towards the window to get the sunlight and that different beans sprouted on different days.

Just a reminder...we are planning a celebration performance for June 2 at 2:00. We hope that many of you will be able to come see us share our learning about self regulation and coping skills. 

Fairy Tales and Field Trips

We are getting excited about our Field Trip to Wonderland Bowling Lanes next Tuesday morning. This will be a good opportunity for us to practice the behaviors and self control we have learned in our classroom while in a different setting. We will be sure to share many photos!
We are also beginning to work on an end of the year celebration that we will do with Dr. Cohen's class and Miss Ross's class.  We will be sharing some of our learning about coping skills and the zones of regulation on June 2 at 2:00. We hope you will all be able to join us!
We have continued with our fairy tale unit -we can identify many elements of a fairy tale, such as repeating phrases, magic, settings such as castles and forests, good and bad characters and animals who talk or are magical. This week we read "Rapunzel" and "The Princess and the Pea" among other tales. This class loves fairy tales! Here are our Jack in the Beanstalks...our own beans are beginning to sprout!

In our social skills lessons we worked on how to focus - we decided that we need to look at our work and to work quietly. We also need to sit up instead of turning around when we work. We learned that we need to "close the file" on things like video games when we want to focus on our work. We can tell ourselves that we can think about non-work things after we are finished. We can get our work done faster and smarter when we focus. Here are some students who are focusing on their work:

We also have been working on saying, "OK" when a direction is given, both at home and at school. We made a chart about the size of a problem and our reaction to a problem. We learned that when our reaction is much bigger than the problem, people around us feel uncomfortable. We are practicing thinking about the size of the problem in terms of how serious it is and how easy it could be to fix. 

Loon Lake is having a Slumber Read In on Thursday April 2 - your child may wear their pajamas to school that day. (Remember, we will have recess outside.) 

The marking period ends next week and report cards will be printed and sent home after spring break on April 15. 

Fairy Tales in room 113

We read several versions of Jack in the Beanstalk  and created beanstalk art of our own. We planted bean seeds and are anxiously waiting for them to sprout! We are learning that there are different versions of many fairy tales. We are working on identifying the main characters, the setting, the problem and the solution in the fairy tales we are reading.

We read several versions of Little Red Riding Hood  and The Three Little Pigs.  We worked in groups to create houses built of straw, sticks and bricks.

We also worked in groups to build a house that we thought the wolf could not blow down, using only the supplies given to our group. We had to cooperate with our team members and share ideas with each other. After we built the houses, we tested them with a "wolf" (Mrs. Ellis' hairdryer!) to find out whether our houses were sturdy or not!

We talked about our houses and how we felt about working in teams. We wanted to figure out why some houses were sturdier than others, and we wanted to learn how a team can work together. This kind of activity is called a STEM activity - Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. We'll do another STEM activity in a few weeks!