Group Meeting:  Every Monday is Method Monday.  It is the day that I teach the children about how to do something in the classroom.  Today, I showed them how they will sign in when they come to school.  This will start tomorrow.  The children will come in, hang up their bags, wash their hands, and then sign in.  This will allow us lots of practice in learning to write their names.

Small Groups:  The activities for this week are listed below along with the schedule for today.
Activity #1 (Red Group)  Last week, the children learned to draw Mat Man.  Today, they drew him in their Writing Journal.  They used the Mat Man song to make sure that they didn't forget anything.
Activity #2  (Yellow Group)  The children were given a paper with Mat Man figures.  Instead of a rectangle for a body, these Mat Men had different shapes for bodies.  The children had to listen to the teacher give the directions for coloring the shapes.  
Activity #3 (Green Group)  The children listened to the story Clifford Goes to School.  They found the words in the book that were rhyming words.  They also listed the characters that were in the story.  This is part of the Read It Again curriculum that we will be using.

Story:  The story for today was The Crayon Box That Talked by Shane DeRolf.  A girl finds a box of crayons at a toy store that do not get along.  She takes them home and draws a beautiful picture with them.  She helps them learn that even though they are different that together they can make a beautiful picture.  We had a discussion after the story about how we are all different, but together can be wonderful friends.

Large Group:  The children learned how to hold a crayon using the song "Pick Up a Crayon" from the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum.  After practicing holding the crayon, the children colored stars and fireflies on a paper.  The objective of this paper was to practice coloring small spaces instead of scribbling all over the paper. 

Snacks:  The snack for the morning class was cheese sticks, Goldfish and juice brought by Daphne.  The afternoon snack was Goldfish and juice brought by Caden.  Thank you, Daphne and Caden!