Our Trip to the Outdoor Center

Our trip to the Outdoor Center was a wonderful, hands-on learning experience! We practiced appropriate and respectful bus behavior. 

We had a beautiful day for our trip and were so grateful for the funding we received from the Walled Lake Foundation for Excellence!
We used "whole body listening" to learn about soil. We practice whole body listening during group time and at the social work table. This was a great way to take this skill out into the real world!

Then we went outside and gathered leaves and sticks while we walked in the woods. 

We used our sticks and leaves to grind on screens - we made SOIL!!

We worked together to carry our soil back into the woods. 

We also learned about camouflage...we used carrots and celery and leaves to camouflage some potatoes. We worked with a partner to make our potatoes, and then we hid them. It was fun trying to find all the hidden, camouflaged potatoes! 

This field trip was wonderful opportunity to practice our coping skills and to work kindly with others. Have your child tell you all about the day tonight! 

We have been practicing kindness in our room. We read a book called The Kindness Quilt and made a quilt to show all the ways we are kind to one another in our classroom. This trait fits beautifully with our social skills lessons about empathy. 

Next week we will focus on a specific behavior each day to earn a feather for our headbands. 

Respect and Kindness

Last month, students at Loon Lake learned about the character trait of "respect". Each classroom chose a student who has demonstrated this trait throughout the month of October, and they received a special certificate.

Here is the link to the school PBIS blog: http://loonlakeelementarypbs.blogspot.com/

This month, we are working on the trait of "kindness". Our class is reading books about kindness and trying to use kind words with each other. We made a list of kind words such as "please", "OK", "excuse me" etc...you can encourage your child to use kind words at home too. 

We continue to work on the coping skill we learned last week - Stop, Think, Choose and this week we learned a new strategy for self-calming. This one is called Squeeze, Rub, Rub and there is actually good scientific data that it works! It is a sequence of squeezing your fists, rubbing your forehead and rubbing the tops of your legs - repeated quietly 5 times. Here is a picture of it:

Every morning we do something called "the picture of the day". We look carefully at a picture on our interactive white board and take turns telling about what we notice about the picture. This task gives us excellent practice with inferences ... we are learning how to infer things based on clues in the picture. Today we looked at a picture of many smiling children wearing pink shirts who were all looking up - we made inferences about why they all had pink shirts on and why they were all looking up...then we decided we would try to take a photo doing the same thing. Here we are!

We are completing our nocturnal animal unit and books...some of our pages were really tricky and required us to listen and watch when the activity was modeled. 

Next week we will begin to learn about the Pilgrims, the Mayflower and the Wampanoag Native Americans. We will read many legends told by woodland Native Americans.  

Our Field Trip is on Wednesday - thank you for sending in your permission slips and money! Your child should dress for both indoors and outdoors for the field trip and he/she should bring a sack lunch/drink. We will eat at the Walled Lake Outdoor Center. We will be learning about soil and camouflage during our science classes at the Outdoor Center. I will be sure to take and post plenty of photos!

I am looking forward to seeing you on Thursday for Parent Teacher Conferences! I will have your child's printed report card to give you then. 

Halloween

We had a lot of fun wearing our costumes and walking in the parade. We are really excited about Halloween! 

 

 We even wore our costumes to Center Time! 

We began a new science unit - we are reading and learning about nocturnal animals. This week we talked a little more about owls and then learned about bats. We learned how to write "can, have, are" sentences in our journals about bats and we created an art page for each animal. 

 

In our social skills lessons we talked about similarities and differences. We learned that two friends or classmates might have different feelings about the same situation. Understanding that people can feel and think differently about the same situation is an important part of social perspective taking. We also introduced a new coping skill called "Stop, Think, Choose." We practiced thinking about choices that won't get us into trouble. Whenever we learn a new coping skill, we hang up a picture to help us remember and use it. 

Our field trip to the Outdoor Center is scheduled for Wednesday, November 11. Permission slips have been sent home and need to be filled out and returned. We are asking for $3.00 to help with the cost. Students will need to dress warmly - we will be outdoors part of the time. They also need to bring a sack lunch/drink - we will eat together at the Outdoor Center.

Parent Teacher Conference Day is November 12 - I am excited to meet with you all! 

Owls

We began our study of owls this week. We are reading both fiction and non-fiction books to help us learn all about owls. 

 We worked really hard to create some wonderful 
owl artwork. We had to focus, gather all of the paper and follow all of the steps to complete our beautiful owls. 

We watched some video clips of owls flying, hunting and with their owlets. We wrote about owls in our journals too. We worked hard to label our drawings.

On Friday, we dissected owl pellets. Ask your child to tell you all about owl pellets and about the bones they discovered inside their pellet. They each have a little plastic container of bones that they found inside their pellet. 

Upcoming events...
***Our parent support group meeting will be next Wednesday at 6:00 in our classroom. All parents and caregivers are welcome!
***Our Halloween Parade will be next Friday at 2:15 - children should bring their costume to school to wear in the parade. You may watch the parade outside of our school. We will have a simple Halloween party afterwards for the children ... let me know if you would like to send in a snack or drink for the party. 

It was a busy week!

We had a busy and productive week! On Tuesday, our class attended a Bus Safety assembly. On Wednesday we practiced going to our "TEAM rooms". Next week, we will go to our first TEAM meeting. TEAM time will happen school wide once a month. Each of our students will be assigned a TEAM classroom, along with children from all other grades, and go to a 1/2 hour  TEAM meeting. Our meetings will help build community and teach lessons about traits and behaviors that we want to see at Loon Lake. This month, our focus is on "Respect". Our students will be supported by myself and our two para educators as needed so that everyone can have a successful experience.
       Here we are wearing our TEAM necklaces as we get ready to head off:

     

On Friday, we were very excited about the Color Fun Run! Here we are in our T-shirts...

...and warming up for our run...

The rain held off and everyone had fun running around the track and through the colors...

Here is how we looked after the Color Fun Run....

I think there will be some extra baths and showers tonight! 

Next week we will be learning all about owls!