Friday Follow Up-March 19, 2010

This week in Social Skills group, the Upper girls spent some time with Ms Jen working on our conversing skills. We created a list of conversation DOs and DON'Ts and practiced acting them out. Then we divided into groups and played a game called Mumble Jumble in which each team was given a list of 10 question/comment sentence strips and had to put them in sequential, logical order. The teams enjoyed acting as judges for one another's conversations. Ms. Shannon and Ms. Deanna's Inters enjoyed learning about semantic attributes using St. Patrick's Day riddles and a categorization game.

In music this week, a lot of us were getting ready for our trip to the Hebrew Home next week! In the Primary class, we practiced songs like "Open Shut Them," "Make New Friends," and "Old McDonald." In the Inters classes, we practiced songs like "I've Been Working on the Railroad," "Yankee Doodle," and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." We are excited to sing at the Hebrew Home next Friday! In Miss Kate's class, we had so much fun making our rhythm band out of our "instruments" that we brought from home! There was so much creativity, and we had instruments like chopsticks and a plate, a rice-filled plastic egg, a spoon in a cup, and an empty milk carton! We made some awesome music. In Miss Barbara's class, we watched clips of the group STOMP and talked about how we can make rhythm with household objects, like brooms, basketballs, and pots and pans. We will be making our rhythm band next week.

This week in Ms. Emily's class we continued our friendship theme. The students invited each other into a "friendship web" and said once nice thing about a friend in the class. We also made froot loop friendship bracelets where the students practiced making requests. Each student was "in charge"of a different color froot loop. The students did a wonderful job asking each other for various colors.

This week in Ms. Jenni's class we continued the class's plant theme by making the yummy dessert Dirt and Worms. The students learned sequenceing words while following directions. They also used a variety of verbs to describe the different actions that went into the activity. At the conclusion, we sat in a circle and used a special "talking stick", which the students used to ask each other what their favorite part of the activity was. Everyone did an awesome job listening attentively to their friends!

In fitness, we worked on and discussed the importance of 3 major leg muscles calf, quadriceps ,and hamstrings. All this week we did exercises involving the lower body, lunges squats steps and using the scooter. No dance this week because of the field trip.

This week during OT, Ms. Jenni's class wrote letters to thier pen pals. Students practiced writing statements and questions to their buddies, and were very excited to tell them about a recent visit to the theatre to see Flat Stanly! Primary students were ready to lean after building and maneuvering their very own obstacle courses. Forget the pencils! We used shaving creme during our handwriting lesson to learn and practice our letter of the week, "G."