Friday, January 30th, 2009

The Magic Trains:
1.) Practiced handwriting skills and cutting skills with Ms. Brook. After we read about a spaceship in “Professor Noah’s Spaceship”, two students cut out spaceships with Ms. Brook.
2.) Worked on following directions while listening to a song called “Pass the Beanbag” with Ms. Brook. Each student had to pass the beanbag and follow directions such as “place the beanbag on the floor”.
3.) Made bubbles with Seena and the kids really loved blowing bubbles. We also talked about our Science Fair and each student told the teachers which experiment was their favorite and why.
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

The Diener Dinosaurs:
What a fabulous Friday! Today the Diener Dinosaurs...
1.) Read 'The Little Red Hen' together - the story didn't have any illustrations, so we created a poster-sized picture of our own to go with it! Then we made puppets of the characters in the story and each took turns putting on a puppet show acting out the story.
2.) Had Social Skills with Miss Melissa! We helped her put her friend Clowny back together - we did a fantastic job following multi-step directions!
3.) Checked on our ice cube science experiment. Our water remained in liquid form after a night in the refrigerator, so we moved it to the freezer to see what that would do. Some of us predicted that the water would turn to gas, some thought it would turn to ice, and some thought it would remain a liquid. We can't wait to see what happens!

The Mighty Dieners:
1.) In Brain Gym we worked on circuits including cross-crawls, running around cones, jumping jacks and jumped in place.
2.) During teamwork activities we split into groups of three and had to help each other put a puzzle together! There was a lot of talking to each other and helping each other out!
3.) In math, we finished adding our weather pictures to this week and then graphed the weather for the whole month.
4.) In art, we drew shapes using one line and then colored the shapes in using different colors!
5.) In science, we started putting together our presentation board for the Science Fair. We also, started a new experiment where we had to make a prediction of what shape the sponges would turn into when they were added to water. We tallied the results and compared our predictions to the actual results of the experiment.

The Golden Owls:
1.) In math we are continuing with subtraction. Even though it has been a short week our Math Mania results have improved. Students are getting quicker with their math facts and processing the problems with less difficulty.
2.) During OT we played one of Ms. Kathy's cd’s and worked on laterality and gross motor skills. We also did several Brain gym activities and our regular sensory circuits.
3.) In writing we are focusing on Topic sentences. Ms. Maisie and Mr. Paul are modeling several examples for the students to follow. The students then decide on their own topic sentence and use lots of details and examples as support.