Happy Grams, Listening, and a Whole Lot More!

I don't normally blog on Mondays, but today was just a great day! I need to share it with you.

So, as some of you know, last week was tough. I'm not sure what the source of the behaviors were, but the kiddos just had a hard time listening and staying in control of their bodies. I talked with some people who work at the elementary school, and the situation was similar over there. It was just one of those weeks. I decided to spend this week reviewing expectations and rules. I also decided to add in a few new positive reinforcements to help inspire the children to have a good week.

One of those new reinforcements is a Happy Gram. My hope is to send home one Happy Gram with each child every week. On the Happy Gram, I will write about a good moment the child had in school that day. This good moment could be anything from good behavior to mastering a new academic skill to simply having a great time doing an activity. I award the Happy Grams at the end of the day, and all of the children cheer for them! Today was a huge success with this! The children were motivated to work so well with each other, and they were really great listeners. I was super proud of them all!

We also reviewed what listening looks like today. I showed the kiddos an online story called, Henry B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen, (you can find it here) and we talked about the troubles Henry got into when he didn't listen and how much better his life was when he did listen. We talked about how to tell if someone is listening, and how we can do that in the classroom. I am already noticing a difference in how the children are listening, and I'm sure that by the end of the week the kiddos will all be super listeners!

We're starting to explore color this week. I'm not sure if we'll do a full study on color, but I've been noticing the children drawing a lot of rainbows in their journals so I figured I'll see what kind of interest there is. To start the exploration, I added some colorful rice to the sand table and started a sticky easel in the art center. Here's what the exploration looked like:

 The easel is covered in a piece of contact paper, which makes it easy to stick things to it.

 I cut some strips of construction paper and the kiddos stuck them to the easel in whatever design they wanted.

There was all kinds of measuring and counting going on in this center all afternoon! It was also a great chance for them to practice sharing and working together.

I've got more color activities planned for the rest of the week, and we'll see where they take us.

Our first sign of spring visited us today too:

He visited us a couple of times throughout the day, and the kiddos were very excited to see him! I was too! Bring on the spring!