Our Classroom!

We continued the important work this week of defining ourselves and our classroom.  We talked a lot about hopes and dreams, reading the books Me . . . Jane, and Surfer Chick. We discussed making goals for the school year and goals for our lives.  You would be surprised how intuitive these young children are. One student thought about making cutting their goal for the year.  That is an amazing goal for a five year old. . . Do you know how much work goes into learning to cut in a straight line?  If you chat with these children you will quickly realize that they can identify what they need to work on.  That ability to be reflective is what makes our classroom wonderful!

We are going to attach our hopes and dreams to these beautiful stars that we made out of homemade clay.  Watch for them next week!

We discussed school rules a bit this week and made self portraits to go with our classroom pledge.  

 

Wednesday found us enjoying a wonderful afternoon with Mrs. T at the Minot- Sleeper Library.  The children are getting into the routine of arriving early to pick out a book, mark their reading record apple with the book that they read the previous week and settling down to hear Mrs. T and her 'pets' read.  After the reading Mrs. T always provides a craft related to the stories.

The end of the week saw us working for longer and longer amounts of time specifically in the area of math.  Some children, who are developmentally ready to begin workbooks, did so this week.  The workbooks that they are starting right now are very simple and reinforce letter formation and sound.  I did emphasize to the children however, that there are so many great works on the shelf that also teach them about letters and sounds.  I prefer to see a child at this age engaged with a work that is utilizing gross and fine motor skills, rather than filling up a workbook.  So many of our language and math works require sorting, matching, movement, etc.  I explained to the children that that is how their brains learn best, and even though workbooks are fun to do, workbooks are only one little piece when it comes to the ways they learn.

We ended our week with another beautiful, Friday, afternoon!  The most perfect afternoon for a little hiking and fairy house building at the Slim Baker Lodge.