Hello Families!
I have sent home magazines with each child for you to work on together at home.  This is not a requirement but can be a fun project to practice school skills.  These magazines needs assembling! Students can practice cutting across the dotted line with scissors.  I always remind students to put their thumb in the little hole and fingers in the big hole.  We want their thumb on top,  so I always say "remember thumbs up!" Students can then practice number recognition by finding the page number and putting them in order.  Parents can help staple the book together.  When it is all done,  take some time to read the magazine together.  Talk about the front and back,  turning the pages correctly.  A big skill we first hit in preschool is how to treat our books and what they are for.  They are for reading and usually a quiet experience.  Some younger students are still exploring books and may put them in their mouth,  throw them ,  or turn the pages  roughly, causing them to tear.  We want our students to cherish books and the experiences they give us.
We talked a little about books this past week in the classroom.  We talked about books are sometimes like people.  They have a front,  a back, and a spine.  Books also have titles or names, just like us! Books also have authors , the person who writes the words.  Some have illustrators, or people who draw the pictures in the book.
We also discussed predicting! Students learned that predicting is making a guess about what is going to happen during the story.  When reading with your child at home, stop and ask what they think will happen when you turn the page.  Students learned their prediction may not always be correct, and that's okay! This helps the child get more engaged in the story  and become better readers later on!
I also sent home some information about the zones of regulation.  This is something new I am starting in my classroom this year.  This will help students identify their feelings and the feelings of the people around them.  Each zone is designated a color for the students to better connect their knowledge.  Blue is the zone where you might feel tired, sick,  bored, etc.  Yellow feelings might be excited, silly, or uncomfortable. Red is the zone or feelings of anger, frustration, etc.  Green is the zone we want all students to be in most of the time, although we know this is not always going to happen.  Green feelings are happy, calm,  ready to learn, etc.  Last week, we identified feelings in each colored zone.  I have posted visuals in the room for students to have access to at all times.  We encourage the kids to tell us how they are feeling, but sometimes they don't have the words.  The visuals can help them tell us what they are feeling or they can use the color, such as "I'm feeling blue."
I have also made a calm down corner available to the students in the room.  If  a student is not feeling green, they can go to the area to get back to green.  There is a pillow where they can take a break.  I will slowly be adding other calming items as needed  A possible use of this area might be if a student has had a rough morning before they come to school and are not quite ready to participate in the day's activities, they can go to the calm down corner to take a breath and get to green.  This may be because they missed the bus and had to rush to school, they might have not slept well the night before, they might be excited about a big event coming up and are getting distracted Again, this is something new for me as well so I might have to make changes later in the year.  I'm hopeful this will help students socially/emotionally and regulate their bodies.  Most elementary schools in the corporation also use the zones of regulation, so they will have this prior knowledge.
I wanted to take a second to make sure all parents know to please make sure your child is not bringing toys to school from home.  We have noticed some toys in backpacks.  This can cause a distraction at school.  I would hate for personal belongings to get broken or stolen while here.  We have plenty of toys in the classroom for  students to use during their time. Thanks and please let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or comments.