ASL

Today we learned some words that fall into the category of foods/drinks. Ask your child to share these signs with you:

• Milk
• Cracker 
• Water
• Juice
• Drink
• Eat 

Click here to see them in action.   

Part 2 of Morning Meeting

Morning Meeting—Everyone in the classroom gathers in a circle for twenty to thirty minutes at the beginning of each school day and proceeds through four sequential components: greeting, sharing, group activity, and morning message.  

Here students are learning the 2nd component of morning meeting by sharing their favorite food with peers.  We in cooperate a lot of movement into these meetings too.  Below, students bunny hop to three different peers, look the in the eye, high five and share their favorite food in a complete sentence, listen to their peer and go and find another to share again!

Roll and Find

In math students are not only working on understanding quantity but also number recognition.  We count all day long in the classroom throughout our day.  Here students are rolling a dice and finding the number to match.

Practice with our names

Practicing our names happens every day in a variety of ways.  Dotting with q tips, rainbow writing, dry erase and many more ways to come. 

How can you help your child be successful writing their name?  

• Praise their attempt
• Use play dough to roll out the pieces to make letters for their name
• Write in shaving cream on your table (this is a great cleaning tool too)
• Have your child sign their own name on art work, cards, letters, and where ever else they can.  
• Write on the windows with dry erase markers
• Use a cookie sheet and cover the bottom with rice, have students write their names in rice
• Write their name in glue, shake sand over it. Let dry and allow child to trace with their finger, put under a piece of paper and have the child to make a rubbing of their name

Peace Lessons

Mrs. Sulecki (sounds like so-lucky) visits our classroom weekly to teach lessons to the students how to make peaceful choices.  Last week students used a hula hoop to represent their personal space.  

Here are some items discussed:

• What is personal space?
• Why is personal space important?
• What can you do when someone is in your personal space?

This week students practiced making eye contact with each other when greeting them.  Mrs. Sulecki played a game where students did not vocalizing but rather communicated by eye contact.  The students LOVED THIS!

Here are some strategies we are working on for handling situations when things do not go our way.  

• Belly Breathe
• Blow out a candle
• Dots and Squeezes

Be sure to have your child show you these strategies at home.  They are many that we do without even realizing it!

Fine Motor practice

Fine motor practice happens daily in our classroom to help build up strength for writing with ease.  Students practice cutting on straight lines, curvy lines and zig zags.  When your child is cutting their thumb should be on top like the students pictured below.  Proper scissor hold makes the process of cutting easier and less cumbersome for children. 

How can you help?

• Encourage your child to put their thumb towards the ceiling (they hear this all day from me)
• Let them cut paper at home
•  Fold paper, make a design and have your child cut it out 
• Make snowflakes

Germs make us sick!

Mrs. Walter faked sneezed glitter all over us to give a visual of how germs travel when we sneeze into our hands.  Days later we are still finding glitter everywhere.  Hand washing is a huge part of kindergarten, please do your best to model this at home and expect your child to was their hands and sing happy birthday as they do it. We are practicing coughing and sneezing into our elbows to do our part to keep our community healthy.

Library visit

Students visited the library, learned how to care for their books and had an opportunity to share favorite books with friends.  Students are able to bring two books a week home as long as they return the ones from the previous week.  Books are due back on Tuesday of each week!  

Detroit Red Wings Assembly

Today we had the Detroit Red Wings assembly.  They talked to us about goal setting, eating healthy and staying active.


  

Learning ASL (American Sign Language)

Mrs. Witzke, our speech pathologist, taught our class our first official American Sign Language lesson.  Addison has taught us quite a bit but Mrs Witzke is helping teach how to sign sentences, poems and songs.  Here are some signs to ask your child if they can teach you:

• Friend 
• Nice
• Toilet
• Numbers 1-10
• Yes
• No
• Please
• Sorry
• Wait
• Thank you

5th grade Reading Buddies

Each week our classroom partners with Mrs. Swan’s fifth grade room for learning partners. Students will have the opportunity to have favorite stories read to them, have book chats, play math games, read to the 5th graders and S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) Activities. Not only a preferred activity but students develop relationships, gain confidence and a safe opportunity for practicing an important life skill like communicating effectively with others (listening to understand then speaking to be understood).