Smart Apples

This week we discuss the importance of friendship and how to use helpful words with friends. We practice using words to enter into a group and requesting a turn or sharing toys. The past 4 weeks, we have laid the foundation of a community classroom. The children learned some strategies to manage feelings and use our safe place to regulate their emotions. We learned about routines and our schedule to help children to transition during activities and track their day. We created classroom jobs and commitment to help children to connect with friends and peers.    This week we begin our fine motor journal and handwriting without tears. These activities will help the children to strengthen their fine motor skills and pre-writing skills. On Wednesday, it was our first language group. The children learned about who, the situation or problem, feelings and a solution.  On Thursday was our first music class. The children played instruments and sang songs. We closed our week with our...

This week we learned about people that work at our school and our schedule. We learned about how people around our school help our classroom to be safe such as floaters, Mrs. Tracy and therapists. Mrs. Tracy visits our classroom and encourage the children to try different food. We introduce our visual schedule. This schedule help children to track activities and time in our classroom. A visual schedule helps children to develop a sense of security and trust because they know what is next. The children are taking turns in telling their friends about our next activity. Also, we added school jobs. This week we added the greeter, goodbye wisher, cheerleader and STAR helper. These jobs will help the children to become part of a community classroom and establish new rituals that help them to connect with teachers and peers.  At art table, the children experimented with water and markers. It was so much fun to create new colors and use white and blue paint to paint on aluminum foil. At li...