Welcome to the new school year! The students have been learning many foundational lessons and routines of the classroom. This can include how to use a rug and how to carry and return a work to the shelf. As our shelves slowly open, works are being introduced including practical life pouring, grasping, and spooning works. In Sensorial our pink cubes, brown prisms, knobbed and knob less cylinders were shown. All of these Sensorial works involve visual discrimination and simple language like large to small and thick to thin. We have also been focusing on building our community, showing acts of kindness through our friendship tree, and discussing grace and courtesy. Grace and courtesy lessons include using a quiet voice, walking around the rugs, the polite way to interrupt, etc. Our movement lesson was walking on a line and in art we worked on fine motor skills while tearing paper. Our students have been thoroughly enjoying our reading loft, our class pet Bart, and the peace corner. In the peace corner we learned about worry stones. If a student has a worry they can choose a stone, think about their worry, and place it in a box allowing their body to feel better about the worry. It gives the child a concrete way to help navigate these emotions. We also introduced our peace rose which allows the students to build conflict resolution and problem solving skills with their friends. One friend holds the rose and talks using I-Messages while the other listens and they take turns passing the rose and talking. Music and K Art specials started this week as well and were loved by all. We are looking forward to a wonderful year of learning!