After our wonderful Valentine's Day celebration, we carried the spirit of the holiday into this week and talked more about friendship. As I have said all year, this class is a very kind and caring bunch, but it isn't possible to always get along - there are bound to be a few problems here and there. So we read the book, Have You Filled a Bucket Today?, which goes beyond friendship and discusses doing and saying things to help other people feel good - taking the time and attention to really notice and do good things for others. Whether you are 5 (or 50), sometimes it is hard to think about how others feel and not just about your immediate wants. We discussed many play situations where little problems have arisen and tried to think of different solutions - especially ones from the other person's point of view. As the week went on, the children had to let me know when someone had been kind and "filled their bucket" - they couldn't tell me what they had done because that would be showing off a bit! I wrote down lots of their examples and read them each day to the class. We started filling up a bucket with the many ideas - one friend thought that we might need a bigger and even bigger bucket! For a reminder, we each made a marble rolling painting and decorated our own buckets!
Marbles Galore
For something new to explore, I offered the afternoon class some marble racers to build with and soon the morning class was enjoying them too. They were a hit for sure, but there weren't too many pieces. So we emptied out a donated bag of recycled materials and found toilet paper, paper towel, and wrapping paper tubes. Add rolls of scotch tape and masking tape, and soon we built all sorts of marble-rolling structures - taped to the bay window of course! We were excited to see what works, and what doesn't, and figure out new ways to make the marbles move, land, and even fly! Discovering how marbles move will be a great bridge to learning how people move in our upcoming unit on Transportation!
Beauty and the Beast
The children had a special treat this week - we were invited to the preview of the Upper School Musical, Beauty and the Beast! They were enchanted by the singing, dancing, and well-known characters. I saw a few JK friends at the performances already this weekend (thank you!), and if you have a chance...there is one more show on Sunday at 2:00 p.m.! I really think it's one of their best shows ever (and not just because my daughter is in it), so I hope to see many of you on Sunday!
p.s. If you do go to the show, I suggest that you arrive early because both Friday and Saturday's performances were sold out! Sorry my blog was a little late, but yes, I was at the show!
Can't get the tune, "Be Our Guest" out of my head,
so hope your weekend is going great,
Mrs. Jeffers
2 comments:
Love the "fill the bucket" idea. Looks like everyone was enjoying the marble fun!
Thank you for your positive reinforcement at school. Helps with discussion at home :)
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