What a busy week of school. It has been a joy building our school family and continuing to get to know each of our Blue Whales. The Blue Whales are kind caring friends and developing wonderful friendships. I hear a lot of talk around the snack tables about making plans for playdates and moms calling each other. Your children are excited about their new friendships too.
One of the most important jobs in the Blue Whale classroom is to keep you and your friends safe, we are all Safekeepers. Each Blue Whale told their friends and teachers they would keep them safe and added their names to the Safekeeper Box.
We sang Where is Thumbkin and practiced finger isolation. And that led us to our discussion about busy fingers and sleeping fingers. Thumb, pointer and tall man are the busy fingers and ring man and pinky are the sleeping fingers. Each child received a cotton ball for ring man and pinky to sleep on while the rest of their fingers stay busy. This is helping your child develop a tripod grasp which will help them manipulate many things including toys, tweezers, glue and writing utensils. We read books about a mouse and a squirrel that we had to take through an adventure in each book using our busy fingers.
Our friends worked on prewriting activities by tearing paper and making paper plate self-portraits. Each Blue Whale looked in the mirror trying to match paper strips to their skin color, eye color, lip color, hair color and any other important attributes. They are hanging up in the hall and each one is so unique with added details that were important to each child.
We had our first Music & Movement class with Ms. Vicki on Wednesday. The Blue Whales had fun singing, dancing and playing musical instruments. The first Chapel was on Thursday with Pastor Brandon. The children really enjoyed singing songs and dancing in the beautiful Sanctuary.
We will be having our first practice fire drill next week. We read our book about what to expect in a fire drill and the Blue Whales had great questions and discussions to prepare for next week.
We had Guess-n-Tell and Vivi did a great job with three clues about her item and calling on friends to guess the item. The Blue Whales were able to guess Vivi’s item because of her great clues.
On Monday we will have our first Lunch Bunch. Please label your child’s snack separate from their lunch. Lunch will be every Monday and Wednesday and pick up time will be 1:00 pm. We are going to be working through our schedule next week with the addition of lunch, so I’m not sure if we will be inside or outside for pick up on Monday & Wednesday. I appreciate your grace and flexibility as we settle into a routine. I will update you with pick up instructions for Mondays & Wednesdays as we establish our routine. But for now, if you do not see us outside at the picnic tables, please come to the classroom to pick up your child. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we will continue with pick up in the classroom at 12:00 pm.
Fall Conferences are on Monday, October 9th and Tuesday, October 10th. I will send out an email this weekend with more information and a Sign Up Genius link to sign up for a conference.
We are enjoying creating, moving, singing, discussing, observing, reading and playing with our Blue Whale friends. Hope everyone has a nice weekend.