Our centers this week included finding baseball pictures around the room and writing the sounds we hear, writing the power words in "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", completing CVCe (long vowel and silent e) activities, reading books on RAZKids, and working in our reading groups.
In Phonics, we did a lot of work on CVCe words. We learned when to turn a CVC word into a word with a long vowel and silent e (ex: kit-kite) and practiced reading and writing CVCe words (rose, gate, cube, etc). Please continue working with your child on long vowels at home.
Our new Reading unit has us looking closer at text features and how we use them when reading nonfiction books. We used the table of contents to preview our books, made text to self connections, and used the pictures to help us tell the story. We also worked on asking ourselves "does that make sense?" when reading independently. Our vocabulary words this week included: warn, signal, haul, and mighty.
In Writing, we listened and discussed various opinion writings. We worked on writing opinion pieces using "I think" as our sentence starter. We wrote opinion letters and stories.
We continued working on subtracting numbers within 5 during Math. Please continue subtracting with your child at home.
We revisited some of the various ways that we can be mindful throughout our day. These include:
-Smell the Cake, Blow Out the Candles -This is the main way we get calm in KD. Pretend you have a birthday cake in front of you. I say "smell the cake, blow out the candles". This is just taking a slow, deep breath.
-Roller coaster breathing – Hold your hand out and trace with your other pointer finger. As we trace up our finger (go up the hill), we breath in through our nose, as we trace down a finger (go down the roller coaster hill) we breath out of our mouth.
-Mindful moment- We sit in our mindful position (feet on the floor, hands in our lap, back against the chair, head down or eyes closed) and we take a deep belly breath. We try to let go of all of our other thoughts (what we just finished, something we are looking forward to, something that is frustrating us) and try to live in the now. We also try to visualize what is coming up next (what it will look like, sound like, what tools we will be using etc.)
-Mindfulness 5-4-3-2-1- We are learning this one this week! This is great when we feel anxious. We use our senses to help us live in the now. We note (silently) 5 things we can see around us, 4 things we can touch, 3 things we can hear, 2 things we can smell and 1 thing we can taste. This really helps us get our mind off of other overwhelming feelings and focus on the present.
- Buttons and Squeezes- You can ask your child to show you what this looks like, but I will try my best to explain it… Buttons: we push down with our thumb on the opposite palm of their hand ten times, moving around the palm, then switch hands. Squeezes: hold your arm out and with the other hand squeeze your arm, starting at the top of your arm and moving down, then switch arms.
-Giving our heart a hug- Resting our right hand on our heart to feel it beating and then using our left arm to wrap ourselves in a hug and just holding it there with some deep breathes.
We checked out the Science Fair projects and had counseling with Ms. Peterson!
Looking ahead...
