Happy New Year!
The students returned rested and ready to work. We had a great week talking about feelings/emotions. We practiced our happy, sad, scared, angry and silly faces and sang, “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” We enjoyed reading the books, My Many Colored Days, Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen and When Sophie Gets Angry, Really, Really Angry. We also had Impulsive Puppy puppet and Timid Tiger puppet join us at circle to talk about how our “engines” can feel high, low or just right. We thought of some things we could do if we were feeling too high (overly excited, not being safe) or too low (shy, sleepy) to turn our engines to “just right.” The children really enjoyed the lesson and connected with the feelings. We learned how to give a thumbs up for feeling too high, a thumbs down for feeling low and a thumb in the middle for feeling just right. Many students shared with me “Miss Emily I’m feeling just right!” throughout the week.
The children have been very busy with their work this week. The younger children have been busy matching, working on phonetic sounds and numbers, shape and color recognition. Our 3- year- olds enjoyed playing a game with the Geometric Solids on Tuesday morning. We learned the names of cylinder, sphere and cone and then we hide one under a napkin and they had to guess which one it was by feeling. There was also a lot of great fine motor work: stringing beads, scooping, pouring, lacing cards, cutting with scissors, Metal Inset shapes. Busy, busy!
Our older children are working on recognizing numbers up to 100 with the Ten board, the Short Chains and the Hundred Board. We also worked on writing our numbers correctly with a wet sponge on a chalkboard, followed by a piece of chalk. They very much enjoyed this activity and it helped them when they did their next handwriting worksheet.
A few of our older students have begun to work on their Geography Maps. The students pin punch around the continents to make their own world map. It’s a great hands on way to learn about geography. We are also reading lots and lots! Everyone is making great progress. Please continue to read with your child at home.