The Investigators had another great week learning more about our emotions and how we handle them! Monday we started out with realizing it makes us all happy when we take turns with each other and have listening ears. We played a game where we got to take turns popping bubbles! The trick was we had to let all of our friends have a turn too and we had to have listening ears to have our turn, we did great! We also played a game with listening ears where we got to dance when the music was playing, but when the music stopped we had to sit back down on the white line. It was fun! On Tuesday we talked about what makes us frustrated and how we respond to being frustrated. We learned instead of crying and yelling when we are frustrated we should take deep breaths or walk away. One technique we use often in class is the sensory bottle. When a child is frustrated or even if the class is too loud the child has to shake, shake, shake the bottle then take a deep breath. It helps to soothe the child with their emotions. We all began a two day project of creating our very own sensory bottles to take home. We started by filling the bottle up with water using a funnel and a cup. We then got to pick what color we wanted the water and add food coloring, the fun part was shaking the food coloring up in the bottle. On Wednesday we finished our bottles by each child adding a variety of items inside of their bottle to make it unique. Some of the choices were ribbon, foam shapes, straws, popsicle sticks, flowers, and glitter. We were very proud of our sensory bottles. On Thursday we had music! We loved singing the hokey pokey, using rhythm sticks as a hammer and nail, and using the stretchy band. Our favorite is always jam band when we get to pick an instrument out and play to the song. On Friday we got to have a tie dye water day! We loved picking out the special colors we wanted to make our shirts. It was exciting to see how the shirts turned out. Have a great weekend! Mrs. Groves and Mrs. Pompa
0 Comments
Note from Mrs. Willis: Mrs. Pompa's grandmother passed away. Mrs. Pompa is with her family in California and will return to work in early August. In the meantime we are using subs/teachers whom your children already know to cover for her. I know you will keep her in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time. Hello Investigator families! We had another great week focusing on our emotions. The goal is to give each child a word and even a sign for how they are feeling, that way they can express themselves instead of getting frustrated. We have been practicing the sign language for our ten emotions everyday and are getting good at remembering them. We are practicing the signs for scared, shy, frustrated, silly, excited, sad, happy, angry, and proud. You can see them hanging on our white board and encourage your child to show you them. On Monday we decided to take our education outside and go for a walk to the Cypress Wetlands. We saw two alligators, baby turtles, a bunny, frogs, and even a giant caterpillar. When we reached the amphitheater we had a picnic with our snack, plums and lots of water. It was a lot of fun. Tuesday we focused on the emotions happy and sad. We looked at ourselves in the mirror and practiced making a happy face and a sad face. We each chose to make either a happy or sad face. We colored the circle in and glued on eyes and a foam shape nose. On Wednesday we began to talk about being angry. This included what makes us angry, what we look like when we are angry, and what to do when we are angry. We practiced an exercise of how to respond when your friend takes your toy. Each child had a turn where someone else took their toy, they practiced using their words and saying either 'not nice' or 'not done yet.' We read a book 'When Sophie Gets Angry- Really, Really Angry' by Molly Bang. This teaches us if we get really angry we should walk away to calm down. We decided this was a great idea. We also drew a picture in red, orange, and yellow crayon about what makes us angry. Some of the pictures included the rain, Mommy and Daddy putting us to bed, or Daddy when he leaves school. Thursday we took our topic about angry to the next level and discussed that even when we get angry we should remember to have nice hands. We compared our hands and saw how they are different and alike, but all special. We read the book 'I Call My Hand Gentle' by Amanda Haan. We each made our own set of gentle hands by tracing our hands on our favorite color paper, then decorating our hands. We to all of our hands and made them into a sign for our room. Friday is always our favorite since it is water day! We don't get to play outside too much during the week since it is so hot, once water day comes we are extremely excited! This water day we continued to talk about our gentle hands. We did an activity with water balloons where we had to pass around a balloon using our gentle hands. We learned if we use 'not nice' hands the balloon would break and hurt. This reminded us if we use 'not nice' hands to our friends they might get hurt and sad as well. It was a great week! Reminders: Always remember to check the white board to see what we did during the day and who needs pull-ups/ diapers. Also remember to check your mailbox for take home work through out the week. Next Friday is tie-dye day! Please bring in a white t-shirt! Thanks and have a great weekend! Mrs. Katie Groves and Mrs. Brandi Pompa _What a great week the Investigators have had. After a long Fourth of July weekend we got back into the swing of things and started to explore our emotions. We began to talk about what our emotions are and some of the different emotions we have. On Monday we started off with our favorite emotion, happy! We talked about what it looks like when we are happy and what are some of the things that make us happy. We made a collaborated chart of 'what makes us happy' for our classroom. Each child got to draw on the chart something that makes them happy, then we wrote down what they drew. We also worked our fine motor skills with some puzzles. On Tuesday we learned a total of nine emotions and the sign language for each emotion. We have been practicing them all week. They are scared, shy, frustrated, silly, excited, sad, angry, happy, and proud. We also added on to 'what makes us happy' by talking about how we can make our friends happy. Some of the ideas we came up with were saying nice words like please and thank you, using nice hands, and sharing. We split into two groups. One group practiced the nine signs for our different emotions, the other group practiced saying please and thank you while passing a ball, then the groups switched. We also got the chance to make Makai's birthday present! We all put a painted handprint on a t-shirt! Wednesday we talked more about our nine emotions and focused on happy, sad, angry, and excited. We did a project where we colored what our emotion was. For example for happy we colored while pretending to be happy, for sad we colored a picture while pretending to be sad, etc. In the end we got to open up the paper and see how our emotions made us color differently. On Thursday we looked back into our colors and had a review using the Pete the Cat song during circle. Then we played a sorting game outside. We had to take colored stars and find the matching colored chalk circle on the sidewalk. Then we had to make sure the colors matched and put the star in the circle. The Investigator's did a tremendous job sorting over fifty stars! They loved the activity so much we played it again. We also had music where we got to pass a puppet frog while singing about frogs. We also played a game where we walked around hula hoops then putting one of our body parts in the circle. In the afternoon we celebrated MakaiThorpe's 2nd birthday! He is our first birthday for the year. We had a great time eating cupcakes, giving Makai his present, and watching Makai move his picture from one to two on the door! On Friday we enjoyed a relaxing water day. It was a hot and humid week, so it was nice actually being able to play outside in the water! Please send in a white t-shirt - we will be doing tie-dye in two weeks! Have a great weekend, Mrs. Groves and Mrs. Pompa |
Details
Class of 2016
Researchers TeachersMolly Fastenau Archives
June 2016
|