Week of Sept. 10-13 Friends and Feelings

We had a great first week of school. Everyone came to school happy and they are getting use to the classroom routine. We are all meeting new friends and getting to know our new friends. This week everyone completed a page for our book, "I Am Special." Each class made a book and every child will get the opportunity to bring the book home and share it with their family. Please take the time to sit down with your child and look at the book, talk about it and see some of their new friends at school. There is a paper at the back of each book that is for comments, please feel free to share any comments you have regarding the book or just sign your name. We will continue to make different books throughout the school year and everyone will get the opportunity to take the books home and share them.  When your child has a school book at home please be careful with them, all of the students take pride in their work and we want to be able to share them with everyone.

Next week our theme is Friends and Feelings. We are going to be making friendship bracelets placing a bead on our bracelet for each of our friends as well as practicing those fine motor skills When the children first arrive at school there are three tables set up with activities on them. These activities typically include a fine motor task, a learning task and a cooperative, problem solving task. The children are then given the opportunity to rotate to each of the activities. Some of the arrival activities may be repeated later in the week to provide additional practice with these skills.  We are also going to be completing our self portraits we started on Thursday last week. The morning class will be making a school bus that displays all of their friends at school, this is a great way for you and your child to learn and remember their new friends' names. The afternoon class will be making a school house with all of their friends in it. We will also be reading several stories about how to be a good friend and labeling our feelings.  We are going to problem solve some friend situations identifying how the situation might make us feel and how to solve the problem positively. At this young age children are just learning about friendships and how to navigate them, this is a way to help influence those positive relationships and positive problem solving skills. We are also going to be using photos we took in class to play a Friend Memory game.

Just a few reminders:

       If you have any additional paperwork please turn it in as soon as possible. Once I have all of the paperwork I can put together a class roster. The class roster will be sent home so that you can contact anyone from our class.

      Once I input everyone's email addresses and I have signed consent forms I will begin posting journal entries in everyone's "cubbies"(eportfolio). I have some photos from their first week of school that I will be able to start inputting.

      Thursday is our gym day so please make sure your child wears tennis shoes or shoes that are secure on their feet, not flipflops or slippery dress shoes. This week when we went to gym we practiced the three steps of throwing: step, point, throw. We practiced this by throwing a ball and knocking down the candles on the birthday cake (bowling pins on a box).
      Thursdays are also Show and Share, please check the calendar that was sent home at the parent orientation regarding what is for Show and Share.