I is for Ice Skate

With this unseasonable weather its hard to remember it's Winter! In hopes of an upcoming snow fall this season, we made ice skates. This activity allowed us to be creative while working on our fine motor skills, lacing, prepositions (up, down, around, under), color recognition, counting one-to-one correspondence, and following directions. Once we painted our ice skates we laced them up!

Belly Breathe

We have been hard at work during our first full week back to school since Winter Break! Today's Social Intelligence lesson was focused on how we handle ourselves when we get angry. Throughout the year we talk about different types of emotions and how each can make us feel. It's easy to know what to do when you're happy, but much more challenging to know what to do when feeling upset. One of the strategies we discussed today was Belly Breathing. Belly Breathing allows us to catch our breath and relax so that when we get angry we can help ourselves calm down. The most exciting part of today's lesson was the new song and danced we learned! It's called, Belly Breathe; check it out!

Check back tomorrow to see Ice Skates and what else we have been working on!

Say Cheese!

Today we practiced our even numbers by playing Even Number Bingo.

Later we had a chance to be behind the camera instead of in front of it! We worked with squares, rectangles, and circles to make our own cameras. This activity helped us work on shapes, colors, sequencing, and following directions. 

Our first trip out to the playground of 2013; we even got to play in some snow! 

 Built a mini-snowman!

'Dropping the Ball' to Start 2013!

Today we celebrated the start of 2013 by making ourselves into fireworks (sort of). We added a Happy New Year hat to our smiling faces (photo) and even ordered numbers 1-10. Some of us even counted backwards as they do on New Year's Eve. We worked on our fine motor skills, number sequencing, color identification, and problem solving. 

It was a short week, but we sure did a lot (and had fun!)

We have a fun new game of matching color sight words on snowmen to their matching buttons and top hats.

(Interested in the Snowmen Pattern? Scroll to the bottom of the blog and look under "resource pages".)

We had a great time at recess again today! We are looking forward to being able to go on the playground as soon as the snow melts.

Bring on 2013!

Welcome back from Winter Break! The New Year brings some exciting changes to our little class. Today we welcomed two new friends and Mrs. Zucco to our growing group! We had a busy day readjusting to being back at school. Along with Art, OT, PE, and academics, we had a block of time to run off our holiday energy. It has been a wonderful day getting to know our new friends and catching up with our old ones. 2013 sure is looking bright!

PJ, Pancakes, and the Polar Express

It's the day before break which means it's PJ & Pancake Day! We spent the morning cozy in our PJs and helped ourselves to some yummy pancakes.  Afterwards we had a visit from Nanook and were invited to the Elementary School's reading and viewing of The Polar Express. We had our tickets punched and all! 

I would like to wish everyone a very happy holiday and a great new year! I'll see you in a couple weeks!