If it makes you happy...

Whew! What a busy day! We had alot going on today, all at once, but the group is starting to be able to handle that I think. I love how we are "gelling" as a class and getting accustomed to the schedule of our day. To be honest, the transitions from one portion of our day to the other have been my biggest ocstacle. I have been working hard and working with other teachers to find a system that works the best for my particular group of kids. I am encouraged to see how the small changes I have made are working! We talked about our feelings and emotions more today. We focused on "happy" at large group time by making a chart of what makes us happy...both at home and at school. "Playing" and "eating lunch" made us happy at school, while "seeing Mommy and Daddy" and "watching cartoons" bring joy to most of us when at home. The charts are a great way for us to work on skills like literacy, classification, comparisons, and more. We read some books that focused specifically on one type of emotion: I Was So Mad, Scaredy Cat, David gets in Trouble (guilt), and When I'm Feeling Sad. We followed those up with a book I read at lunch that had the character, a little girl, going through a full range of emotions day by day and examples of things that happened to make her feel that way called Today I Feel Silly and Other Moods That Make My Day. We worked in small groups to complete a few "projects" today, and will finish up tomorrow. While touring the Bentonville Public School Early Childhood Center last week before one of my meetings, I saw an awesome display that I just knew I had to do. The children (two at a time) fingerpaint on shaped posterboard with two different colors. Imagine that-when the colors got mixed, which is enevitiable, a new color is created! Secondary colors! And you thought we just fingerpainted without a purpose... ;)

Junior and Gracie mixed yellow and blue on a rectangle, which ended up green!

Paizley and Brayden used red and yellow to make the square orange!

The heart turned pink when we used white and red!

Paizley wanted to do this dinosaur puzzle this morning. I know how difficult this one is, and knew it was going to take some work to complete it, but we got started.

She was so tickled when Banjo came and laid down right next to her. He is such a good doggie!

Friends came and helped us work on the puzzle, and we worked together!

Let's label how Paizley feels when the puzzle is done---PROUD!

Today there appeared to be a very important meeting going on outside.