Ask Me About Thursday, October 3, 2019

Yesterday the children had a substitute for the first time this year.  The kindergarten team had training in Germantown in the afternoon on our new reading program, so four teachers were out.  I got a very nice note about the students.  Our substitute said they were well behaved and worked nicely.  They earned a Bear Buck for their behavior!
We started our day with an interesting photograph.  There is a lot going on in this picture.  Interestingly, the first comment was about the car behind the tall grass.  It felt like home to me since I come from a family of motorheads!  But we then focused on the rainbow, different types of clouds, and the downpour in the background.  We know the sun was somewhere because of the rainbow and the white clouds.  We also noticed the dark parts of the clouds.  Ask me to tell you about this photograph.  The children did such a good job of turning and talking to each other.  We are working on these talking and listening skills:

We took time today to practice belly breathing.  We can use belly breathing to calm down when we are anxious, upset, or just throughout the day to help in staying focused.  We have had a few problems with children getting upset with each other and hitting or pushing.  I know this is all part of learning to be part of a group.  The children are learning strategies to help them learn how to solve kid size problems peacefully so they don't become bigger problems.  Mrs. Kanter will come in later this month to teach the children additional strategies that are part of DeBug, which is what we use to help the children in solving those kid-size problems.  Ask me to show you how I can belly breathe.  Here's the short Sesame Street video we watched to help us in learning how to breathe in through our nose and out our mouth.

For our Brain Break today, we watched a video clip of what I did when I was in elementary school.  It's not the greatest video, but the music is what is important.  We adjusted some of the exercises since we don't have mats in here. I remember this so clearly with our gym teacher, Mrs. Goodman, putting the record player in the middle of the gym and leading us through Chicken Fat!  Enjoy!

We read a beautiful story today called Say Hello, by Jack Foreman.  The story begins with a little dog who has no home and is alone.  He finds a group of children and he soon becomes part of the group.  But then we see a little boy who is alone.  Ask me to tell you what happened.  We did a turn-and-talk about a time we felt alone at recess and what we could do so that we weren't alone unless we wanted to be for a little bit.  Then, the children drew pictures and did some kindergarten writing to tell what they would do if they noticed someone alone on the playground.
The children did an awesome job today in literacy stations while I was testing students.  They are using their six inch voices and working in the stations to become better readers and writers.

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe