Have you filled a bucket today?

This is a guide to Daily Happiness for Kids! I love this concept.......it is so simple. Basically everyone in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD walks around carrying an invisible bucket. The bucket has ONE purpose to hold good thoughts and good feelings about yourself. The book gives colorful examples of people with full buckets and people with empty buckets. I think this is a wonderful way to teach children the "Golden Rule". I am teaching them to be "Bucket Fillers". A bucket filler is someone who shows love, when you say or do a kind thing, or when you just give someone a smile. You can also be a "bucket dipper" and that is someone who says or does mean things to others. Here's the trick........when you fill a bucket you get some happiness in your bucket too! But when you dip from someone's bucket your happy thoughts can leave your bucket too!!

So basically.......All Day Long, we are either filling up or dipping into each other's buckets by what we SAY and DO!! I have special tattoo's showing a full bucket and each child came home with one today on thier hand.....to help them remember to be a BUCKET FILLER not a bucket dipper!

Winners Never Quit! by Mia Hamm

Today we read a book written by Mia Hamm.She talked about the importance of being a part of a teamand how to loose gracefully. We discussed how importantit is to "play" the game and not about who wins or who looses!And we are a team here at Mrs. Angies......we help each other bylearning and playing together. It is important for the older children to help the younger ones learn, etc....
Whatever you love to do remember....
WINNERS NEVER QUIT!

The Very Hungry Catepillar by Eric Carle

We are reading books by Eric Carle this month as well as our favorite book by him called......The Very Hungry Catepillar. The first spring I was open I bought this book along with a CD where Eric Carle (the author) read the book aloud to the class. I purchased (8) small books so the children could follow along with him and I turned the pages of the large book. This is a great way to give them another skill to help them READ. If you have this book at home read it with your child tonight.......THEY ABSOLUTELY love it as much today as they did last year. Take a look at the catepillars they made in class......they are hanging everywhere!!!

Tigers Roar!

We have finished our weekly reader and classwork. Please take the time to review this work and booklet with your child tonight if possible. We made special reading sticks and used them everyday to read our books! We had a lot of fun talking about tigers and learning about their environments.

Facts we discovered:

(1)Each tigers stripe are unique just like our fingerprints! (2)The majority of tigers live in Asia. (3) A tiger is in the cat family (4) It is one of the only cats that LIKE water!

Books we read:

(1) Make Friends, Zachery (2) Mama Tiger, Baba Tiger, (3) Little Louie the Baby Bloomer (everyone's favorite book), (4)Tigger Tales, (5) Tiger Trouble, (6) Tiger Can't Sleep, and (7)Augustus & his smile.

Reading Readiness Project - Goodbye Winter...Hello Spring!

We have been working on saying "goodbye" to winter and "hello" to spring by making our first homemade book! They all turned out so well. If you receive your child's book and there are some pages empty it is because they missed school that day. It would be wonderful for you to finish it with them and have them bring it back into school so we can all look it. They are all so proud of them! I've taken quite a few training classes in regards to helping children with reading readiness. The following are some of the things I always emphasize when reading with them and you can do it to......their new book would be a great place to start.

• Always read the title and help them count the words in the title.


• Announce the author (Jack Smith is the author and he wrote this book Jane Smith is the illustrator and she drew the pictures in the book).
  
• Help them with understanding front/back/middle of the book....keep it simple.
• Acknowledge the page numbers.
• Ask them to read to you.....encourage them to look at the picture which will help them describe what is going on in the picture. I know it takes time but it is really advantageous for them to become comfortable doing this on a regular basis. It can be the simplest book and it should be simple.......what confidence it provides them.
• Have fun and READ something everyday!