Dance Class with Ms. Maggie

Wow, these kids can move! We are in our 3rd week of dance class with Ms. Maggie and we're having a blast. We're learning how to move and do 8 counts, have control over our bodies as we dance, find a personal space in the dance room and not bump into each other, and we love getting to feel our bodies move to the rhythm of the music!

Here we are learning how to do a follow the leader dance game!

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Pillar Awards

Congratulations to Ginger and Luke for getting a pillar award on the morning school news! The pillar of the month was Responsible. These two kiddos were awarded for their awesome and responsible behaviors inside an outside the classroom! 

Way to go you two!

Playing on the playground!

I am loving this bunch of kinders. They are so sweet and fun. You can tell from this picture we are going to have a GREAT year!

Tacky The Penguin!

Today we read the story book Tacky the Penguin.

It's about a cute and unique penguin that saves his penguin companions with his bold and one of a kind personality towards the penguin hunters. 

The kids LOVE this book. It's one I recommend having in your home library if you don't own it already. 

We made shirts that have symbols of what makes us different or unique. We used markers to draw our favorite things, foods we enjoy, people we love, and add on fun designs. Then we added penguin heads to the shirts by cutting and pasting it together. 

You can see the process below.

 

 

Rainbow Fish

We are having a blast so far in the classroom. So far we are spending our time together singing, getting to know each other, practicing our cutting & gluing skills, working on playing together, sharing, cleaning up our messes, remember where everything belongs or "lives" in the room, and what is expected of us. If you think about it that's a lot to do in a few weeks.

Below are some photos I snapped as we were doing a project. 

1st we read the story book called Rainbow Fish. It's a story about a fish that has shinny scales and wouldn't share them with any other fish friends. One day he got some advice from the wise octopus that sharing his scales will make himself and the others happier. The Rainbow fish took the advice and shared his scales. He saw how happy it made his friends that he instantly knew what the octopus was talking about. 

With this book the class and I had a long chat about how the Rainbow fish made a STRONG CHOICE by sharing with is friends. In our class, we use the phase 'strong choice' a lot. It means to do what's right, think of others, and listen to the rules. Then we discussed what it means to make a WEAK CHOICE. The kids grasped this lesson well. We referred back to the story where the rainbow fish could of made a weak choice and decide not to share at all. 

You might hear me refer to strong/weak choices in the newsletters or in notes or e-mails home. Some of the kiddos might even start using it with you at home. It's a great way to use positive language with the kiddos instead of using bad vs. good.  It also makes things very black and white for them and clear to understand. 

Check out the pictures of our coloring, cutting, and pasting project we did after reading Rainbow Fish. 

 

Coloring the fish. We are practicing filling in all the white space and staying in the lines.

Now, we are cutting out scales that were made on scrap-booking paper. The kids got to pick which scales they wanted to add to their fish.

Now the gluing part.

The finished product.