Duck Class Family

We had a wonderful first, full week together. We were very busy Ducks, exploring our classroom, checking out our outside play spaces, eating together, and beginning to get familiar with our new classroom routines. Everyone is doing a great job of learning each other’s names and lining up to travel to all the places we go during our short time at school. Occasionally, you might see your child struggle to fit things into their little cubbies. Before you jump in to rescue them, encourage your child to try it themselves first. Almost every time, they will figure it out and beam with pride in their accomplishment! You will too! Often times, the opportunity to struggle is a gift. As we keep reminding them…we can do hard things!!

Some of their favorite activities this week were making designs with rubber bands on pegboards, building castles, playing family with our new friends in the super cool loft, creating gardens on the playground, playing shape bingo and discovering robots hiding in our Alphabot Blocks!

This week we introduced our classroom jobs, as well. Each week each child will have a new job to do. Having jobs not only teaches responsibility, but it fosters community and gives the children a sense of pride and accomplishment. We remind the children that just as a home family takes care of each other & helps out, a Class Family does the same. A few of our jobs include:

• Breath Leader (leads us in taking one of our 4 types of breaths as part of our Brain Smart Start)

• Wish Well (moves friends into the heart to wish well)

• Calendar (adding a number & counting them along with friends)

• Weather (colors a square on our weather graph)

• Song Leader (chooses a favorite song for us to sing)

• Line Leader, Door Holder, Electrician (turns classroom lights off when we leave) & Caboose (very important to make sure everyone is safely in line!)

Another special job is to be the Lucky Duck. Each week the Lucky Duck will be invited to share what we call a Guess & Tell. On Mondays we will notify you if your child is the Lucky Duck for the week. They can bring in ONE item hidden in a bag or box (or a photo of the item in an envelope, if it is too large) on Tuesday. Help them think of 3 clues about the item (you can write them down to help your child remember). Your child will tell us the clues at circletime, and we will guess what they brought to show!

This week we also made our first self-portraits! First we sang a song called Mat Man as we built a person along with the song. Then we moved to the tables to draw our own people with pencil and added color with watercolor paints. Finally, Miss Carina & Miss Sue traced over the pencil with black marker to accentuate the lines. Look for our portrait gallery coming next week to the hall outside our classroom!! You MUST see what amazing artists we have in the Duck class!

Next week Chapel with Pastor Lee begins on Wednesday and music with Miss Vicki begins on Thursday.

Have a wonderful weekend with your Duckies!

Miss Sue & Miss Carina

Welcome Yellow Ducks!

Hello Yellow Duck Families,

It was just wonderful to see our Yellow Duck friends together in our classroom this week. Each one of them did an amazing job of dealing with the big task of saying goodbye to their families and a new beginning with their teachers. Any first day nerves disappeared very quickly and each one of our yellow duck friends had a great time exploring their new classroom and saying hello to some new friends.

Each day you will be able to see new updated photos of our classroom fun. Just go into the CCP website, enter the password to the Parent Portal, go into the Yellow Duck class page & click the classroom photo button. Looking at these photos with your child is a great way of stimulating conversation about school, feelings and friendships. Alternatively, at the end of every blog that is sent to your email on Friday, is a “read on” button. PRESS IT! You will be able to see the blog in its entirety, including the photo link, that way.

Blog notes:

~ If you need to respond through the blog, please use the “click here to email Sue directly” button. If you don’t use that button and just hit reply, Ms. Shelly ends up getting the email and then has to forward it to us.

~Be aware that several of our families have elected to not share their children’s image publicly. If you download a photo from our album or snap a shot during a birthday celebration, please do not share it via social media or any other public venue. Please pass this information on to anyone you might privately share photos with (ie. grandparents). Thank you for your understanding with this matter.

This week we read the book, “ishi, simple tips from a solid friend”, by Akiko Yabuki. It is a book about a rock named ishi (rock in Japanese), that reminds readers to choose and share happiness. It’s an awesome way to spur conversations about different emotions and how to work through them. We all made our own ishis (with permanent markers 😉) and we sent them into the world to pass on kindness.

Our Yellow Ducks had fun pretending it was the dolls’ birthdays and making kinetic sand cupcakes this week. They enjoyed mixing yellow & blue playdough to make it green. Many children did tanagram shape puzzles & made bead bracelets, too. After reading Pete the Cat Rockin’ in His School Shoes we also did our 1st writing as we attempted to write our names to add to our own book! (to be published next week 😉).

Lucky Duck!!

Each week every child will be assigned a job to help with in our classroom. One child will be the Lucky Duck and have a chance to share something that is special to them with the class. We will let you know on Monday if your child is the Lucky Duck and ask that you help your child think of 3 clues to give their friends. We will attempt to guess what the Lucky Duck has brought to school!

DISMISSAL:

Thank you for waiting in the hallway until we bring your child to you. We work on last names, parents’ names, pet names, etc. to make it fun. Each child is noticed this way and it reinforces our desire to know them well.

Have a wonderful weekend with your lovely little Ducks!

Sue & Carina