All Kinds of Fun in Enrichment!

Hi everyone!

First, please help me welcome Mrs. Haynes into our classroom. She's a kind and caring person, and the children took to her immediately, like I knew they would!

We had an exciting week in Enrichment! I hope you've heard all about it, but if not...

Mr. G came to read How Full Is Your Bucket? by Mary Reckmeyer and Tom Rath on Monday. It was about how things we do during the day fill or empty our (and others) good feelings bucket.

Mrs. G came for a visit on Wednesday. We worked on tossing and catching a ball to the beat, learned a song (Bluebird, bluebird) and played a game to go with the song. The kids loved the song! Ask them to sing it to you!

We're exploring a lot of feelings in our class. We're talking about things that make us happy, sad, angry, proud and more. We'd love for these conversations to continue at home. Labeling how you're feeling will help them to identify it in themselves. This applies to both positive and negative feelings. A phrase we use in our classroom is, "It's okay to be sad." (or scared, or tired), often followed by "How can I help?", and/or giving them options like "Would you like a hug, would you like some quiet time on the beanbags, or something else?" Using the same phrases at home and at school really helps to reinforce the ideas. We hope this helps in this season where big exciting things are happening, little ones are introduced to large groups of people they don't know or see infrequently, and where daily routines are changed.  

Our centers this week were...

Art- We decorated apple cut outs with different emotions (smiles, tears, frowns etc.) and made fluffy snowflakes using snowflake cutouts, glue and cotton balls (these will be decorating our Enrichment family tree in the classroom!

Math- We explored more feelings puzzles with scared, proud, and shy.

Easel- We colored by number our way to fun gingerbread houses.

Discovery- Feelings sensory bottles, where there were different things were put inside the bottle to represent the different emotions (with a little help from the characters of Disney's Inside Out)

Writing table- We added a light table and beads to our table. The children got to make their own shining designs and patterns.

These things, in addition to the playdough table, pretend center, block area, the library, and dancing made for a fun time.

REMINDERS: Monday is Holiday Sweater Day!

We have 2 days of school next week, as Jack and Jill is closed Dec.22- Jan 1.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Warmly,

Christina Renoni and Julie Haynes