Ask Me About Wednesday, September 12 and Thursday, September 13, 2018

Thank-you to everyone who came out to Back to School Night last night.  I wanted to make one correction.  I said the children use the mouse pad on the Chromebooks, but actually we have touch screen Chromebooks, so they can use either.

​We had our first Bear Bucks reward today.  We had set a rather low number of 10 for our first reward point, and we actually had 12 Bear Bucks today.  We watched a quick video for our reward.  We set our next reward at 25 Bear Bucks.  
Yesterday we started our day by talking about Belly Breathing.  We practiced breathing in through our nose and out through our mouth to help calm down or to focus better.  We then talked about meditating and thinking of a quiet, calm place in our head as we practiced breathing.  
I didn't mention our Brain Breaks at Back to School Night last night, so I'll let you know right now that we take a short break in the morning to stretch and take a break from our lessons.  We sometimes watch a dance party or GoNoodle video and copy what the dancers are doing.  Sometimes I put music on and the children will move around the room to music using scarves or ribbons.  We moved to quiet music from Tangled, then got a little more active and galloped to Hoedown by Aaron Copeland, until they were soooo tired, or so they said!.  Galloping is hard work!  Here are some snaps from our Brain Break.

Yesterday we started handwriting.  We have a special routine for getting supplies ready, so we took some time in learning that routine.  The kids really listened and did a great job doing what was asked.  We practiced drawing straight vertical and horizontal lines, then talked about how saying the verbal path for the letter will help them remember how to write the letter the correct way.  I snapped a few more pictures to show how they work on the white boards to practice their handwriting and word wall words.  

We read a story called Bella's Rules, by Elissa Haden Guest, about a little girl who makes up her own rules instead of following her parents' rules.  Her parents call her grandmother to come help with this problem.  Ask me to tell you what the grandmother does to help Bella learn about why rules are important.

Today, we took some time to get to know each other even better.  We read My Name is Ruby, by Phillip Stead.  This beautiful bird book is about Ruby, a little yellow bird, trying to make new friends.  She makes friends with other birds who are like her in some ways, but different in other ways.  After we read the book, we colored four pictures to show how we like to move, where we like to visit, what we like to do, and our favorite food.  Then we walked around to find friends who liked the same things we did.  Here the kids are asking each other questions to find friends that have something in common.

We continued talking about the Bells Mill Bear Necessities today.  We focused on "I tell the truth about my actions."  We reviewed the word action and moved to show some action words.  Ask me to show you an action word.  We watched Howard B. Wigglebottom and the Monkey on His Back to learn more about being honest about your actions and choices.  We also discussed how it's important to learn to be honest when you have kid-size problems and before not being honest becomes a habit.  I told the children I would post the video so you could watch it with them at home if you want.  

In science we will begin learning about weather.  We collected data today in Math to find out what our favorite type of weather is.  We studied the data and found which kind of weather was favored most, and found some that were actually equal.  I'm not going to say I threw the vote, but I did vote for snowy weather.  I told them children they should pick the weather they really like and not copy what I picked or their friends chose.  Here's our data.  Ask me to tell you what I noticed about our data.  

Have a great evening!
​Miss Wolfe