
During Science Ms. Monks will continue to work with the children on the skills of investigating. You can practice this at home by allowing your child to describe objects with adjectives and play guessing games with your child. Let you child hide an object and then describe it to you. See if you can guess what it is.
This Friday is the 50th day of school! It is hard to believe we are 1/2 way to our big 100th day of school party. We will wear our Tie-Dye Zero the Hero Shirts to celebrate this Friday.
We are so excited for the Topanga Elementary annual Halloween Carnival. Please be sure to get involved and to help with our class booth-Lucky Ducky. All proceeds from the carnival go to TEP, which funds many of the extra special things we offer at school such as Art Trek, Science, Library and of course our wonderful classroom aides.
The opening quote of this post relates to playtime. We are so blessed and excited to have all of the new and wonderful playground materials. We have been opening 4 or 5 stations each day to allow a variety of options including quite activities, ball activities, jump ropes, the structure and sandbox.
We are still noticing some children challenged by our 3 B's-Be Safe, Be Responsible, and Be Respectful. Some children are challenged in unstructured settings and although classroom behavior is acceptable, some playground behavior is not. Please remind your child to:
include all children
keep their hands/feet to themselves
use words to express feelings
make good behavior choices (you can practice "what if's" at home)
go to the adults for help if they cannot solve a problem
Another behavior to work on at home is the development of patience. In our "instant" world, our children are very used to getting everything right away and many have not had the opportunity to develop the ability to wait, even for a short period of time. You can practice this at home by giving your child opportunities to wait patiently. We have discussed this in class and the children came up with places they have to wait. Here are some of their ideas:
the post office
the bank
at restaurants
at the movies
for a ride at Disneyland
driving in the car
going on an airplane
It is important to learn how to wait without being disruptive, or disrespectful to others in line or in the same place. You can help your child practice this at home and in public places.
We practice in class, on the carpet, and in line after recess and lunch. We also discuss positive choices during carpet time through our Conscious Discipline program (look under the "more" tab on this site), and during Council.
Developing social skills is a very important part of this year. Children who are able to develop positive social skills are more successful in school.
Please remember to check your child's share date on our class calendar and email me with any questions. Sharing and public speaking is graded on the report card.
Thanks to our Art Trek parents, classroom volunteers and to all of you supporting your children by sending healthy snacks and lunch, providing good sturdy shoes and by sending sweaters/jackets when needed. This helps my job of keeping the children safe and happy!