ask me about friday, february 24, 2023

Thank-you for your support not only of our Read-a-Thon, but of our vocabulary parade today.  The Read-a-Thon continues next week.  We will be reading many great books together, and I will be putting out some different books in our classroom library.  We loved the vocabulary parade.  What a great activity!  We had a great time seeing the costumes and learning new words or understanding familiar words better.  Here are the pictures I took this morning.  

We read the book Peggy, A Brave Chicken on a Big Adventure, by Anna Walker.  This is a sweet story of a chicken who gets blown from her home in the suburbs into the city by a blustery wind.  Pretty much the perfect book for a blustery day like today, and a great reminder of the word adventure we talked about yesterday.  Our purpose today was to study the pictures and discuss the settings in the story.  Ask me to retell the story of Peggy!

We had an SEL lesson the afternoon.  I chose the book A Little Spot of Anger: A Story About Managing Big Emotions, by Diane Alber.  We discussed what some big feelings are we have sometimes, but then zoomed in on anger.  The story gives thee children a strategy of counting to four and breathing in, then out, on the four fingers, and gave examples of what to do when they suddenly get angry.  Then we talked about what we can do when we have those big feelings and are feeling overwhelmed, tired, sad, or really any time we just need time to slow down and relax.  We learned about Zen Doodling.  I provided examples of different doodles they could on a peace sign.  We used our Flair markers to make the doodles.  Doodle happened to be my vocabulary costume today.  We put some quiet jazz music on and worked silently, focusing on the lines and designs we were drawing and on our breathing as we worked.  I reminded the children to draw their lines and designs slowly and to really focus their eyes on the pen as they moved it across the paper.  This is not only a great activity for mindfulness, but also for fine motor practice.  I told the children this is something they could do on their own at home, with siblings, or something the whole family might want to do.  You just need paper, a thin marker, and a thicker marker is good to make the shape and to section off the shape into smaller spaces to make the designs and lines.  

Here are a few more pictures I took today.