Valentine's Day Fun!

Even though this was a busy week full of Valentine's Day fun and the 100th day of school, we were busy learning and working hard every day. 

We made our valentines mailboxes on Monday, and worked on passing out our valentines cards all week long. 

We painted rainbows and clouds and made suns in order to create this fantastic bulletin board outside of our classroom. 

We all looked our best for picture day! It is amazing how far this group of boys has come this year!

Thursday was the 100th day of school and our Valentine's Day Party - we loved every minute of it! 

We ended our week with some relaxing yoga with Miss Kelly. We really focused on different kinds of breathing - ask your child to show you candle breathing, smile breathing and tumble breathing. Deep breathing is a great coping skill!

We also began a mini unit about American symbols. We learned about the United States flag and the Pledge of Allegiance today.

I hope all of you have a fun mid-winter break and week off of school next week. When we return from break, we'll be working on our American symbols, windy weather and we will start our Dr. Seuss author study! 

February Fun!

We were able to finish up our Ezra Jack Keats author study this week. We read "A Letter to Amy" and made thunderstorm pictures to show what happened in this story.

We also read "The Day It Rained Hearts" and created a fun bulletin board for our hallway! 

We used different shapes to stamp designs on these special hearts - our room is looking ready for Valentine's Day!

We read "Love Monster" and created love monsters of our own. We wrote about what we love. 

We all thought that the Global Day of Play was fantastic fun - we loved using our own toys along with our center time toys. 

Our Valentine's Day Party will be on Thursday, February 14. We will make our Valentines Mailboxes at school next Monday. Students may bring valentines cards to pass out to all 10 children any day next week. If you would like to send in a snack or juice for our party, just let me know. Much thanks! 

A short, snowy week...

This week we began a new author study...we are reading books by the author Ezra Jack Keats. The first book we enjoyed was about a boy named Peter and was called, "The Snowy Day". Ezra Jack Keats wrote many books about Peter and his friends. He was one of the first children authors to include diversity in his books, and most of them take place in the city. Many of his books received Caledecott Medals. We made some snowy day pictures of our own. 

On Friday we had our first yoga lesson with Miss Kelly from Lakes Area Youth Assistance. We learned how to do tumble breathing...ask your son to show you how!

We practiced different poses, like the mountain pose and the sun salutation. We also played a fun yoga game too!

We are adding yoga to our coping skill board! 

Polar animals

We talked about the North and South Poles and the equator this week. We learned that polar bears live at the North Pole, or Arctic Circle and penguins live south of the equator. We practiced cutting the corners off of rectangles to create our polar bears. This was a tricky new skill for us! 

We conducted an experiment to see how polar bears are able to swim in freezing Arctic water - we wore a "blubber glove" and compared what it felt like to put our hand into icy water with it on and without it on. We now understand that a thick layer of fat or blubber helps keep polar bears warm. 

We have been enjoying some great books by Todd Parr.

We noticed that he uses very bright colors in his illustrations and that his books have a message...it might be about making mistakes, being yourself, having feelings or feeling fearful. We created our own self portraits "Todd Parr" style. 

We also challenged ourselves to make some awesome drawings of ourselves! 

Reminder...no school on Monday. Next week we will finish up with penguins and begin an Ezra Jack Keats author study. 

Snowmen and winter stories...

Everyone came back from winter break rested and ready to learn! We read all kinds of snowmen stories, and created a few snowmen of our own. 

We have been learning about different story elements, including the characters, the setting, the problem and the solution. We read two Jan Brett books that were perfect for this: "The Hat" and "The Mitten". 

We created the main character in "The Hat" - it was a hedgehog named Hedgie. His problem was that a sock got stuck on his prickles!

We read a story about a girl who kept making snowmen all winter long. When the snowmen melted, she saved some of the water in her freezer. We brought snow into our room, and sure enough, it melted...we put the water in the freezer and it became ice. This was  a great science lesson for us! We decided to let the bowl of water sit out in our room to see what would happen next...some boys predicted that it would evaporate! The next day, our bowl was almost empty! Your son might like to replicate this experiment at home. 

Many of our social skills discussions this week were about empathy and friendship. We compared cotton balls and sandpaper to kind words and mean words to help us think about the things we say to one another. Developing empathy, or looking at things from another person's view, is an important step in social emotional growth! We are practicing talking things through so that we can solve disagreements calmly - the boys are learning that talking helps, and talking about a problem doesn't mean you're in trouble! 

An Exciting Week!

On Monday we worked together to create this cozy snowy night scene - we love how it looks in our room with the lights on!

On Tuesday we worked like little elves creating a very special gift for our families. We can't tell you yet, but we hope you love it! 

On Wednesday we made some paint stick snowmen! 

We had a lot of fun at our Holiday Breakfast!

I want to wish you all a wonderful holiday and hope you all enjoy some family time over the Winter Break!