We came back from Mid-Winter break all rested and ready to get back into our routine. 

We finished up our letter writing unit and did a little dental health mini-unit! We read some tooth fairy books and made some tooth fairies. We wrote about our smiles and how we take care of our teeth. We conducted a science experiment to see what sugary drinks do to our teeth when we don't brush them. This white egg sat in a bowl of pop - it is very stained and the shell is soft. 

We also began our Dr. Seuss author study and read our first Seuss book, "If I Ran the Zoo". We created our own Seuss inspired zoo animals for our hallway bulletin board. 

We have a Parent Support Group Meeting planned for Wednesday, March 16 at 6:00 in our classroom. I hope many of you will be able to join us. 
We have a field trip planned to the Walled Lake Outdoor Center on May 19. This trip will be funded in part with our mini-grant from the WL Foundation for Excellence. 

Valentine's Week

We worked on a new coping skill this week - Bump in Your Happy Thought. 
Sometimes we can change our grumpy mood by thinking about something that makes us feel happy. Students were able to easily name things that make them smile...we wrote about those happy thoughts in our journal. 

We continued to work on letter writing, and read a funny book called "I Wanna Iguana". In this story, a boy writes his mother persuasive letters to see if she will let him get an iguana. His mother writes him back with the reasons she might say "no". In the end, the boy did get his iguana! We wrote about pets we wish we could get too. 

We were surprised on Wednesday with exciting news! Our 3 EI programs received a mini-grant from the WL Foundation for Excellence! This mini grant will help offset future field trips to the bowling alley and the Outdoor Center. We are so lucky to have the generous support of our district Foundation for Excellence! 

Valentine's Day was really special. We loved opening up all of our valentine cards and we enjoyed eating some healthy and yummy snacks with our friends. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Mid-Winter Break! We return to school on the 100th day of school! We will finish up our letter writing unit that week, and get ready for March, a Dr. Seuss author study, and March is Reading Month! 

Global Play Day was Fun!

On Wednesday we joined other classes at Loon Lake to participate in Global Play Day. We enjoyed having extra center time breaks to use our toys from home and the toys in the classroom. We shared, complimented each other and wrote about this special day in our journals. I loved that the children who forgot a toy were resilient and happily used classroom toys!

We continued working on our mail/letter writing unit and we love to get mail in our classroom mailbox. Please feel free to send a letter in for your child or the class anytime!! 
We had our LL Leader of the Month Assembly on Thursday to recognize students who have been responsible. Here is our classroom leader:

This month we are working on the character trait of integrity. 

We made our Valentine Mailboxes on Friday. Your child may bring in valentines for 12 classmates any day next week. They should sign their cards, but do not need to write classmate's names on the outside - they will just put one card in each mailbox. We are all set for snacks for our party - thank you everyone!! 

We've Got Mail!!!

On Monday we read a book called "Sneezy the Snowman" and made some funny melting snowmen. We wrote about why they were melting.

On Tuesday we noticed that the flag was up on our mailbox! This meant that we had mail to read. 

The children were so excited to read the letters you sent them - their proud smiles were really special to see! You all wrote some beautiful letters, full of love and encouragement for your children. Some children wanted to write back to their mom or dad immediately! Our mailbox will remain in our room, so feel free to send in "mail" anytime! This will be a challenging unit for us because we are writing for an audience when we write a letter - we have to use our word wall, think about spacing, and write neatly. 

Our classroom is in need of Clorox/Lysol type canisters of cleaning wipes. We wipe our desks and tables down often to help prevent the spread of germs. 

We have fruit and cheese coming for our Valentine's Day party on February 12. Please let me know if you would like to send in juice boxes. 

Your child may bring a toy for the Global Day of Play on February 3. The toy should not be electronic or use batteries. 

We began to talk about positive Self-Talk for calming down. Self-Talk engages the thinking part of the brain and can help divert attention from negative thoughts that escalate strong feelings. 

On Friday we welcomed a new student - now we are a community of 12! 

We are planning our next Parent Support Group Meeting on Wednesday, March 16 at 6:00. We plan to talk more about the home-school connection.  We apologize that we haven't scheduled one before then, but we have had many other meetings and commitments to work around, so scheduling has been a challenge! We hope that many of you will be able to join us! 

Last week we wrote about peace and learned about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We used our words about peace and added some hearts to decorate our classroom door. We wrote about kindness in our journals, and looked for ways to be kind to one another in our classroom. We understand that a big part of Dr. King's message was to solve things by using peaceful words -just like we are learning to do with coping skills. Ask your child to tell you and SHOW you a coping skill at home -have them tell you when they could use it. You will be amazed at how smart your children are when it comes to coping skills! 

We also spent a few days learning, reading about and writing about penguins. 

Next week we will begin working on our mail/letter writing unit. Thank you all for sending in letters for your children to read - if you haven't done so yet, please send one in by next Monday. I know your letters will be special surprises for your children!  
On Wednesday February 3 some of our classrooms at Loon Lake will be participating in Global Play Day. For this special day only, your child may bring one toy to school that they will be able to play with. The toy cannot have batteries or be an electronic toy. We also have plenty of fun toys here that we use at Center Time. 
We will have our Valentines Day Party on Friday, February 12. We will make our mailboxes here at school. Most children like to bring a valentine card in for each classmate (we will have 12 students then). Your child should sign his/her name on the card, but does not need to write a name to address it. They will simply put one card in each mailbox - this is much easier for our students to do.
If you would like to send in something for our party, that would be great. We do have some food allergies, so fruit, veggies or cheese cubes would be wonderful. We would also welcome some juice boxes. Just let me know if you are able to send something in. 

More Snow!!

We worked on more snow related activities, journal writing and snow themed books this week. We love our big snow people...

and we think our hand print cardinals look pretty special too....

On Thursday we made some awesome snow plows with snow on them...

and on Friday we completed page 80 in our tens book. 

In our social skills lessons, we talked about how our feelings sometimes affect our behavior. We learned that sometimes we have physical clues, such as a fast heartbeat, feeling hot, or having a stomachache when we have strong feelings. Sometimes we just know we are "upset" but we don't know why or how - taking a break, accepting help and using a coping skill gives us time to calm down and think about why we are upset. We practiced giving ourselves a "stop" signal to interrupt the escalation of emotion, and naming our feeling, which can engage the thinking part of the brain. We will continue to practice this new skill in the upcoming weeks. This is a challenging skill...with practice, your child will be able to do this more frequently. 

Please remember to send in a short letter to your child - this is for our letter writing unit and will be placed in our class mailbox. Please send in the letters (in your child's folder) by January 25. Thank you! 

Snow stories

We welcomed 2016 and winter by reading stories about snow and creating some fun snow art. We used Epsom salts to create "frost" on our snow pictures, and we used marshmallows to paint snowmen. We read  "The Snowy Day" and made the boy in the story, Peter. We enjoyed two Jan Brett books, "The Hat" and "The Mitten" and created art work to go with those books too. In our journals we wrote about snowmen and winter clothes.

In our social skills lessons we have focused on reviewing coping skills -naming them, modeling them, and deciding which ones are good for which situations. The kids are getting really good at this! We had some lessons on empathy and we learned that empathy means you can imagine how someone else is feeling. We have also been talking about feedback and how the information we get from feedback helps us to make good changes and to get better at things.

On Thursday we went to our Loon Lake Leader of the Month assembly. Here is our leader for December - the character trait was resiliency. This month we are focusing on responsibility. 

Please remember to write your child a letter and send it back in to me before January 25 when we begin our letter writing unit. I would like each child to have a letter from their parent -much thanks!