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