Friendship 3 Day Class

What a fabulous week we had learning about friendships and how to be a good friends in the Hippo Room!

Learning Highlights and Objectives:

• We read the book, I'm a Good Friend. We then asked the question, "What makes a good friend?" (comprehension)
• Ms. Ginny and Ms. Saba role played different situations in the classroom, specials, and outside, which focused on expressing feelings through words and how to ask a friend to play.  Role playing showed correct and incorrect ways to handle situations.  The students enjoyed volunteering better solutions.  All these activities worked on communication, contributing to a group, confident behavior, taking turns and respecting others.  
• We read the book, Fill A Bucket and listened to the song on our white board. It is about the invisible buckets we each have inside of us. Each one of us fills each other's buckets up by being kind, helpful, using manners, and using our words.  As a class, we began filling up a friendship bucket with cubes.  Each time we were kind to friends, helped them out, used our words, etc., we earned a cube.  We can't wait to see how many we have at the end of next week.
• The next day we read How Full is Your Bucket?  As we read the book we used real buckets to represent the invisible buckets we all have.  We poured water in and out based on what happened in the book.  Later, the children decorated their own buckets and experimented with water, cups, and pipettes in our blue tub. (fine motor, sensory)
• Capital F for friendship was the letter this week.  It was fun to see how Ms. Saba and Ms. Ginny built this letter with long and short strips. (letter recognition/sound) We then built letter L and letter F ourselves then made the letter with wooden strips.
• The hippos enjoyed decorating a "Friendship Fort" in the classroom with paint and art items. The students had to share the paint brushes. We worked on asking for turns and asking a friend to share the same paint color. (fine motor, working in a group, using language, making decisions independently, asking for help, waiting for turns, having FUN)
• During our 2nd Steps social/emotional curriculum we learned about using self talk to help remember directions and focus our attention. We practiced using self talk during the week!
• Link to "Fill Your Bucket" Youtube video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaddbqEQ1NE
• The students also worked on recognizing their names, rote counting, recognizing numbers, and sequencing our daily schedule during our opening circle time.
• We colored with a friend by laying on our backs under the table. (fine motor, strengthening upper body)
• We also played with shaving cream and cars. (sensory)
• We had our first show and tell. (confident behavior, voice volume, answering questions, using language, respectful behavior, listening skills)
• During group time we built a class structure. Each child picked out two blocks to add to the structure. When it was completed, we thought of different things it represented. (fine motor, contributing to a group, respectful behaviors as we waited for our turn)
• The hippos played catch with a friend using a beanbag in the gym as well as tossing beanbags in a bucket.  The highlight was taking turns with friends on the sit and spins! (gross motor, asking for turns nicely, waiting patiently)
• We went over our September character word RESPECT by singing a song, role playing and reading a book on respectful behaviors.

Books We Read:
I'm a Good Friend
Fill Your Bucket
How full is your bucket?
Playing with friends.-social story

It's Fun To Play At School-social story

That's What Friends Are For

Questions to ask your child

What did we play with a friend during gym class?  (catch with a bean bag)
Who are some friends you played with this week?
How can you be a good friend? (sharing, smiling, talking nicely, listening, giving a compliment, etc)
What job did you pick this week?

How do you fill someone's invisible bucket? (by being a nice friend)

Things to do at home

Point out the ways you fill up each others buckets by being kind, helping out, etc.

Next week:  More Friendship

Reminders 

9/17 Tuesday... Please send to school 5 apples, preferably different colors for sorting

9/18 Parent Open House 5:30-6:30

9/25 Hearing screening at school

10/14 Parent Teacher Conference week-Conferences Monday and Tuesday the 14th and 15th-Sign up genius coming soon

10/30 Theis Pumpkin Patch. We will meet there at 9:30 and an adult must accompany your child. More details to come.

Here we made our "Fill the Bucket" buckets!

Sit and Spin with a friend!

After we read a book about filling the invisible bucket with water, 
we played with pipes, funnels, scoopers and pipettes in water.

Shaving cream was a fun sensory experience.

As I read the book about bucket filling, I used real water to show
how our bucket gets full by being nice and how it empties when
things are not going so well.

Gym fun!

We finished reading our family pages
and traditions.

We played catch with a friend using the bean bags.

Fun in art class!

We are beginning to make sculptures in art class.

We each had a turn to add blocks to our structure.

These were the student's answers. Many  
said it was a castle.

Show and Tell

Show and Tell

Show and Tell

It was fun to experiment with magnets!

We filled our buckets by tossing bean bags in the bucket.

We decorated our friendship fort.

We built the letter F with wooden strips.

Are you a girl or a boy?
This was our sign in. We practiced finding out name,
counting the columns, recognizing the number and comparing the numbers.

Here we practiced strengthening our upper body by coloring
under the table with a friend.

Everyone loves the cutting tub.