Ms. J's Kindergarten Class: Bus Safety Week

Week 2 is through! Yay! :) Hope everyone was able to open my newsletter online. I think it'll be a lot easier and convenient electronically than giving you a paper copy. We'll see how it goes!

This week, we talked in depth about bus safety and how to ride the bus. We will be riding the bus when we go on our field trip to Stages Theatre this month and later on in the school year so it's really important that all students know appropriate behavior so they stay safe both inside and outside of the bus. Ask your child what the danger zone is and where it is. The class really seemed to pick up on that and how it is very dangerous to be in that zone!

We had a lot of fun doing bus-related things! To kick off the week, we made a Specials schedule for you to refer to so you know where we go each day. Hopefully you have it posted on the fridge or somewhere accessible! The students are getting a lot of practice with cutting and gluing. I'm huge on doing activities that involve fine motor skills.

We also did a fun bus puzzle where it was all scrambled up and the kids had to piece it together to look like a bus. This was a challenging activity for some.

On Wednesday, we got to meet a friendly bus driver. He discussed with us how to be safe when riding the bus and also taught us how to get out the back door in case of emergencies.

To finish off our bus safety week, we made a bus out of food! A big THANK YOU to those of you who donated food. Many of you were willing to help out, and I appreciate it so much.

How cute is this??!

Other things we did this week: We finished our rainbow names and added a black backdrop to make it pop! The kids were very excited to see them hanging up on the wall.

We decorated our own name card and found where it goes on our WORD WALL. Students had to look at the first letter of their name and find that letter on the word wall. We will be using the word wall to refer to if they need help spelling a word. Sight words will go on here as well.

I've introduced color words to the class. We are in the process of working on pages that we will compile into a book with all of the colors. Students have to trace, cut and glue, write, and draw the color word. This is working on a lot of skills, including following directions!

I introduced a few more class expectations to the students. This week, we focused on saying kind words and caring for each other. I did an activity where I gave each child a paper heart. We met in a circle and talked about if anyone has ever said something that has hurt their feelings. We shared our experiences with one another, and each time one of us shared, we crinkled our paper heart just a bit. Well as the sharing continued, our hearts got smaller and crumpled because of all the words that have hurt our feelings in the past. Then I challenged the class to try to smooth out their hearts so that there were no lines or crinkles. The thing is, it's impossible to erase them--they're still there. The goal of this lesson was to show that words are very powerful, and every time we say something that is hurtful or mean, it hurts our heart and it stays with us. Next week, we'll be focusing on dialogue that we can use that is appropriate for school and how we can go about solving small problems on our own.

Our hearts before crinkling them :)

To end this blog post, I introduced new playtime stations! The class is doing so well with learning our routines and expectations, and because of that, they earned new toys to play with.