Castles

Right before break we created castles with royalty in them. We also discussed whether we would like to live in a castle or not - most people thought they would! We wrote about that in our journals. 

Our fairy tale this week was "The Three Billy Goats Gruff". We loved hearing about the troll and how the goats tricked him! We created bridges and puppets to retell the story. 

We will finish up our fairy tale unit next week, and get ready for some March activities. March is Reading Month, and we will begin with a Dr. Seuss author study, focusing on rhyming words. Rhyming is an important part of developing phonological awareness...and that helps us build strong reading skills!

We received some exciting news from the WL Foundation for Excellence! They awarded our program a generous mini-grant to use to fund a field trip to the WL Outdoor Education Center this spring. We love the Foundation for Excellence and the work they do to support our schools and students! Our field trip is scheduled for June 5! We can't wait!

Valentine's Day

Our Valentine's Day party was so much fun! We loved opening up each and every card! 

We continued our fairy tale unit with Rapunzel and the Three Little Pigs. We read a version of the three pigs called The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig and got a different perspective of the story. We also read a version that takes place in Arizona called The Three Little Javelinas. This helped us look at a different setting.  (This version is a favorite of mine since I have a son who lives in Tucson and has encountered javelinas!)We watched a video about all of the animals, including javelinas, who live in the Sonoran Desert and created some saguaro cactus like the ones in the book. 

 We learned that people can have different feelings about the same situation in our social skills lessons. Recognizing that people can feel and think different things about something is an important part of social perspective taking. Understanding that everyone doesn't feel the same as they do helps children build empathy. We also add a new coping skill called "Change Your Plan". We looked for ways we could change our plans when things didn't go exactly as we expected. 

Enjoy your Mid-Winter break! Hopefully, spring is on the way and the cold and flu germs are leaving us! We will return to school on Thursday February 22!

Fairy Tales and Global Day of Play!

We loved our Global Day of Play at Loon Lake. We had fun using our toys from home during our Center Time - it was fun to create new ways to play with our toys! 

We read some traditional Cinderella stories and also enjoyed a Cinderella story from the Spice Islands... that version had a grandmother crocodile instead of a fairy godmother in it! We used that book to help us understand about the setting in a story. 

We had so much fun creating our pumpkin coaches...

We made our Valentine's Day mailbags on Thursday - we're all set to begin passing out our valentines cards in readiness for our party on Wednesday! 

Fairy Tales

This week was the beginning of our Fairy Tale unit! We were on the look out for specific things that are found in fairy tales:  magic, talking animals, good/heroic characters and bad/evil characters, and happy endings. We started out by reading several versions of "Jack and the Beanstalk" and created our own beanstalk vines and giants. 

We discussed that the giant was the "bad" character in this fairy tale, but agreed that Jack was also wrong when he took things from the giant. We planted bean seeds in little "sprout houses" - we are hoping they are magic beans!

We wrote about our beans in our journals too.

Our next fairy tale was "Red Riding Hood". We read books that showed different endings, and were from different perspectives too. When we read "Red Riding Hood and the Sweet Little Wolf" we looked at things from the wolf's point of view. This is also an important social skill - understanding that two people can feel differently about the same thing. We watched several non-fiction videos about real wolves and learned that wolves do not really eat people!

We practiced the coping skill, "Count and Breathe" this week. This coping skill gives us time to calm down and process our reactions. We have also been talking a lot about the green zone - we want our students to really "feel" what that zone is like. 

Ezra Jack Keats author study

This week we enjoyed reading books by Ezra Jack Keats. We loved these stories that are about children who are a lot like us...we could relate to the things the children did in the stories and we could understand some of the problems they had. We worked hard on re-telling the stories too, which is an important reading concept. We read The Snowy Day and created snowy scenes with Peter in his red jacket...

We enjoyed listening to A Letter to Amy  and created artwork to go with the thunderstorm scene where Peter was trying to mail his letter...

We read a book called Hi, Cat! and created some cats of our own...

We wrote about our favorite characters in our journals...

Another Ezra Jack Keats book that we enjoyed was called Whistle for Willie about a dog named Willie. In this story, Peter wanted to learn how to whistle - he had to really work to learn how. 

We introduced a new coping skill called "Square Breathing". This is just like "deep breathing" except that it uses a visual to help children slow their breathing down. This slower breathing helps us slow our hearts down when we have strong emotions, and it gives our brains time to think and choose a calmer option. 

We had a new student join us this week, and another new student will join us next week for a total of 14! It is exciting to see how older student welcome and help newer students - many have become great role models for them. 

We completed our week by going into the computer lab and taking the iReady assessment. 

Next week we will begin our huge fairy tale unit! 

Arctic Animals

We learned all about Arctic animals this week by conducting a science experiment. We tested out ice cold water with our bare hands...

We retested the icy water again, but this time we wore a "blubber glove". This was actually some plastic bags filled with Crisco, or blubber. We could really feel the difference - the blubber kept our hands warm in the icy water!

We watched some short videos about walrus and polar bears, and used that information to write in our journals and create some art work. We also drew a diagram of the earth and located the Arctic and Antarctica. We know that penguins live in Antarctica, and polar bears live in the Arctic...they would never meet!     

We finished the week by creating a winter bird house project. 

Next week we will read books by the author Ezra Jack Keats!