January 19,2010

This was a fun week! We are experiencing problems with uploading pictures this week! I sure hope this gets fixed soon. Believe me I am working on figuring this out. In the area of Daily Living Skills we vacuumed our living area and discussed how to use the drapery attachment for cleaning. We worked with the Pledge for cleaning and did a review sheet over identification of cleaning products. We worked on setting the microwave by making chocolate mug coffee cakes. The class loved these and we are getting better at setting time on the microwave. Everyone did an excellent job this week on sorting clothes into piles of light and dark. Our next skill is hanging items correctly on hangers. The class is learning to hang items and then button the second button. Science was a very visual experience using the overhead and various computer sites. We worked on identification of various weather words used with the Commercial Appeal weather map. We will be so ready to see snow if it ever appears on our forecast again.

Friday was a different day in B-8. Mrs. Fields had to attend a meeting at the county office and Mrs. Hill was out due to her husband having surgery. The class went on as usual with a substitute armed with 3 typed pages of notes. The class did lots of fun activities focused on the fact that we have now been in school for 100 days. Students brought in items to count and worksheets to review writing to 100 were also used.

Do not forget that we have an exciting trip to DeSoto Industries planned for this Thursday.

The week of January 12, 2010

We had a great week back after a much needed break. I must admit that the first two days of our return involved getting everyone back into the routine. It is amazing to me how much slower the class runs when we are not running on our very timely schedule. I am thankful to say that by Friday the class was running as smoothly as it did prior to the break. That being said... we had some fun times this week. We decided in keeping with the snow theme that is everywhere in our room, that our art activity this week would involve snow. The students took coffee filters and made their own unique snow flakes and then did an interest inventory to post by the snowflake on the new bulletin board. If any of you come into the building be sure to come by our class and check it out. We had a fun science lesson this week involving us using the Commercial Appeal site and the projector. The objective was to familiarize the students with symbols that are used to represent various weather conditions. The students enjoyed working with the projector but we need to work a little more in this area. I can't wait until the students can locate their state on the map! On Thursday we did our usual cooking lesson to incorporate measurement. The focus was on measurement of liquids in the units of 3/4. We also reviewed the food groups and talked about the category of pasta. The class was able to recall six different types of noodles! One of the stories that we read as a group was about the importance of recycling. The class was very attentive and did okay with (5w questions.) In the area of math we have several concepts being worked on: one of the groups is working with time and the concept of adding and subtracting, another is working on simple word problems that involve adding or subtracting. There is another group that is working on symbol number correspondence. All the spelling groups did okay but due to the short week which will be followed by another short week, I am going to use the same words and pull in a couple of previously taught words. Friday we had a blast as we attended a school wide Pep Rally.

Our big news is that on the 28th we will be traveling to Hernando to tour Desoto Industries as well as the Haven Home. I am excited about this opportunity to show my class a group home environment. Thank you for returning the permission forms in such a timely manner.