We have settled into Grade One this week. The week was filled with friendship building activities and learning of routines. On the first day, we had a little tour of the school and went on a letter hunt. When we had all the letters, we unscrambled them to read a message: Grade One Is Fun. One of the routines that we have begun to establish is Mindfulness. Once or twice a day we will take a break to do some form of mindful activity, such as a guided meditation, yoga or mindful colouring.
Although many students already know about the Zones of Regulation, we reviewed what each of them were and which emotions go with which Zone.
We read a few Todd Parr books. His colourful, creative books helped us recognize our feelings, that we are all unique, and that it is okay to be different. We used mirrors to examine ourselves and to practice showing different emotions. Then the students drew portraits of themselves to create our class board.
We read the popular story Chrysanthemum, which is the story about a little mouse who has a long name and her friends make fun of her. This led to our discussion about when you are unkind to someone, it really hurts their heart. We are learning to think about what we say to our friends and always try to be kind. We made a crumpled heart with bandaids to demonstrate this point. We also did lots of work with the letters in our names.
We also read the famous book Have You Filled Your Bucket Today? We made a list of all the ways that we can be bucket fillers. Students worked one-on-one with me to write one way that they can fill someone's bucket.
We learned about the Read to Self part of the Daily 5. Students were taught what Read to Self looks like and 3 ways to read a book. They filled their chair pockets with a selection of good-fit books and were very excited about reading. They love that they can sit anywhere in the classroom - get cozy and get reading! It is so awesome to see young children excited about books.
Having fun at centres!
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