Happy Fall! We talked about what happens to leaves in the autumn, recited a fall poem about falling leaves and read, Fall Leaves Fall. Our yoga pose this week was “Tree.” See if your child can show you!

Wednesday was International Day of Peace. We talked about what peace means and what it feels like. Many students said peace was “quiet” or “happy.” In honor of peace day we read The Peace Rose and showed our new friends where the peace rose was in our classroom. The Peace Rose is a conflict resolution tool that helps children talk about their feelings and resolve problems with friends by learning to talk it out. The story uses clear, simple language and beautiful illustrations to convey its message and is usually quite effective with our older students.

We also read, Have you Filled a Bucket Today? which is a great book that visually conveys the message of love and kindness for young children. The story says that everybody has an invisible bucket that needs to be filled up, but we need other people to fill our buckets by saying and doing kind things. When our bucket is full, we feel happy. You can also be a bucket dipper, if you use unkind words or actions and that makes others feel sad. After we read the story we decorated our own paper buckets and thought of how we could be bucket fillers.

Some favorite songs this week: “Where is Thumbkin?”, “Open, Shut Them”, “The Allee Allee O” and “The Bear Went Over the Mountain.” We’ve also been enjoying listening to our “Blueberries for Sal” CD that includes lots of great songs about blueberries and bears.

Our afternoon students enjoyed a nature walk on Wednesday afternoon. We collected a bag of leaves, sticks, burrs, flowers, bark and clover. We looked at the items at circle and some students chose to write/draw about them in their journals.

Our afternoon/Friday students started learning about NH wildlife. We read a story about moose and made moose faces, using our hand tracings for antlers. On Friday we learned lots of great facts about whitetail deer. Do you know why fawns have spots? When does a fawn learn how to stand? Why do bucks have antlers? What does it mean when a deer “flags” her tail and shows the white underside? Ask a Friday student! We also enjoyed visiting with a student’s pet rabbit.

Some of our morning friends hard at work:

Reminder: We are going to be talking and learning about our families! Please send in pictures of family members that can be glued/cut for a project that we will be starting this week.

Please remember to pack a cloth napkin in your child’s lunchbox. The children put their snacks/lunch on their napkins so they need one to use everyday. We have extra at school, but we go through them quickly. Thank you!

Olivia the pig from Believe in Books in coming to visit Thursday morning!

Thank you to everyone who responded to the Giving Tree needs this month.