Social Emotional Growth
We love seeing cooperative play happen organically in the classroom. Riley and John work together to create a house for the spiders.
A lot of social emotional related conversations have been happening in the 2A classroom this week. While we have been using a lot of songs and books to talk about our emotions, we are also witnessing first hand how our actions cause others to feel. We try to give children tangible examples of how they might have made someone else feel - for example, if someone has taken a special toy from a friend we might ask them, “How would you feel if your friend got to use your special toy and you said no?”
“That not make me sad. That make me angry!”
“I’m still using it!”
“Here, I’m finished.”
We have also been thinking about personal responsibility, and responsibility for things in our classroom. Lately we have noticed that a lot of our books are getting broken. The children love to run up to us and say, “Broken! Ripped!” So we are having conversations about how to keep our books safe so we can enjoy reading them again and again!
Our bake sale on Monday ties in to this a bit- if we realize that we have to work to make money to order more books, we get a bigger view on how the world works!
In our daily activities, we design projects that limit the amount of children that can work at one time to try and foster a little bit of patience and knowledge that even though we don’t have a turn right now, one is coming as soon as there is a space available. We know how hard it is to wait, so we don’t make them wait very long, but it is good practice!
“It is getting closer to me!!” - Finn (waiting for a turn to mix the cookie dough batter)
Some of us are starting to get interested in the potty - self care is a big part of our social emotional well being. We are practicing things like pulling our pants up and down when it’s time for a diaper, too. Please let us know if you are moving forward with potty training at home, and we will start bringing more children to the bathroom to try it out at school.
Painting
This week a new panel went up in the classroom all about our connection to painting so far- please check it out when you have a chance, and there’s an area on the panel for your participation!
And don’t forget next week we will be going on a paint related field trip - a reminder was sent out today.
Specialists
On Monday we had music for the first time! Our new music teacher’s name is Emily, and we all really enjoyed the music that she played with us. We were able to dance with scarves and play our own instruments, too.
On Tuesday we had Spanish with Ernestina and listened to some “spooky” songs for Halloween.
Also on Tuesday we made a “Monster Mash” of potatoes and carrots with Diane. We added some fragrant herbs as well- oregano, basil and rosemary.
We missed coach Jojo this week, but got a lot of exercise outside for the parade!
Afternoon friends had Karate and Yoga this week as well!