Friendship Week

What a fabulous week we had learning about friendships and how to be a good friend 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 kind 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 of a bucket 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) 
• The hippos enjoyed decorating a "Friendship Fort" in the classroom with paint. 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 lesson we reviewed the listening rules and learned about an attent-o-scope we can use to help us focus our attention on others when they are speaking.
• 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, patterning 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)
• The hippos threw shape bean bags into a bucket with a friend. The highlight was taking turns with friends on the sit and spins and the wobbly boards! (gross motor, asking for turns nicely, waiting patiently, sensory)

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

I Share

I Take Turns-social story

That's What Friends Are For

Questions to ask your child

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 or talking mean to friends)

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 

*We would love to have each family prepare their own "Family Page" to be kept in a classroom book for the children to look at throughout the year. We will keep the book in the book center. We are asking that you either use real photos to add to a standard piece of paper (8 1/2 x 11), or you can email the page to us.  Pictures can be more of your family, extended family, pets, house, vacation, etc...  Please write about a family tradition as well.   Please turn these in as soon as you can, if you have't done so already. We will have each child show his/her family page to the class.

 **Please send in 6 apples, preferably different colors (red, yellow and green) for our apple unit. Please bring the apples on Monday, September 14th. Thank you so much!!

School Pictures Monday, September 14th

Bring library book in bag Tuesday, September 15th

Check out the fun we had during our friendship week!

Art Fun

We used magnifying glasses to examine fall items.

The students enjoyed playing with the wooden people
and their magnetic clothes.

Reading on the wobbly boards.

We connected real pipes and colored pipes.

We used pipettes to fill the buckets.

Each child made their bucket!!

We painted with feeling stamps.

Show and Tell

Show and Tell

Show and Tell

We built the letter F then traced it.

We practiced recognizing our names, counting and comparing numbers.

Music Fun

Tubes and cars

Everyone enjoyed coloring under the table.

We painted the friendship fort.

Our sensory table contained beans, cups, tongs and
pictures of each student. The students used the tongs to 
find their pictures.

We practiced asking for turns with the sit and spins.