We had another full week working together!

We welcomed a new student to our class.  Many friends already knew her from visits to the library.  She was warmly welcomed and quickly integrated into the group.

We were thrilled to have Cindy visit us on Tuesday while she is home for spring break.

On Tuesday we celebrated our third birthday of the month.  Our friend was excited to hold the globe and circle the sun four times in honor of his fourth year.  He shared tie-die cupcakes with blue frosting and chocolate chips – yum!  Happy birthday friend!

Our star of the week wrote and illustrated a great book about himself, and we enjoyed listening to him read it to us and looking at all of the pictures he drew.  We learned that his favorite toy is a bow and arrow that he made (with a little help), his favorite Wii game is “Mario Cart,” and his favorite book is Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!

We learned about feelings and friendship this week.  We read the story Have You Filled a Bucket Today? and began the story How Full Is Your Bucket?, which we will finish this coming week. (This 6 minute video reads the story How Full Is Your Bucket? if you would like to share it with your child and see what bucket filling is about.)  We learned the song “Make New Friends, But Keep the Old.”  We looked at some faces of happy children, and some faces of sad children, and made happy and sad faces of our own.  At the art table we drew pictures of happy and sad faces.  We will continue to talk about how we can help others who may be feeling unhappy, what we can do when we are feeling negative emotions to help ourselves, and ways that we can be good friends to each other.

Everyone was so excited when our friend, who had been travelling for over a month, returned to school!  She told us about seeing a shark while she was at the beach in Florida, and showed us a picture that she drew of herself when she saw the shark.  Can you tell how she was feeling? Welcome back!  You were missed, good friend!

On Wednesday afternoon Zeanny came in to cook with us.  We mixed up some Cajeta De Coco, a sweet coconut treat.  It was so yummy!

Thursday was Down Syndrome Day.  Many students wore their yellow and blue in honor, and we enjoyed yummy yellow and blue cupcakes.  Emily brought in some yellow and blue ribbons and tied them into the children’s hair.  Sue talked to us about what Down Syndrome is.  We learned about chromosomes and that people with Down Syndrome have an extra copy of chromosome 21.  This extra chromosome causes difficulties, including some possible health problems, learning delays, and physical characteristics.  We each made a model of a chromosome by wrapping a pipe cleaner around a pencil to make it all curly, then folding it in half.

During Spanish we learned about how things feel – duro (hard), suave (soft), aspero (rough), and liso (smooth).  We did our favorite activity of telling a hide and seek story with the flannel board oso familia (bear family).

Friday students enjoyed making paper mache bowls in the morning with Tammy.  They all decided that they needed some money, so they began making bills and adding them up.  In the afternoon they decided to create an obstacle course, so they pulled the tables and chairs together, and we set up some other activities.  They had fun crawling under the tables, over the chairs, walking the line, helping each other sound out words, building towers, and writing sight words.  It was a great end to another great week!

Next week we will continue to focus on emotions and friendship.  We will also begin to look forward to spring!  Parent Teacher Conferences are scheduled for Friday, April 5^th.  The sign up sheet is posted on the bulletin board. Please be sure to schedule a session.