The Social Teacher

DAY 1: Getting Prepared and Learning From Our Mistakes This is a three part blog! Today we read the book The Three Little Pigs . There are so many versions and authors of this story, any one will do.  I wanted the students to just understand that a house was built three different ways.  Two didn't make it past the wolf and one did. The brick house was the strongest.   After reading the story, we discussed the pros and cons of a hay, sticks, and brick houses.   Our next STEM project will be very similar to this storyline.  Today they looked at their materials and we discussed pros and cons to the materials:  -variety of shape blocks (you won't know what shape you get -wooden blocks, arms length of tape OR -structure blocks, no tape OR -straws, all the tape you want OR Here were the pros and cons of each groups materials.  You can see my students really thought about the materials and how if they used them what could go wrong and why they would want to use them.   I then used the

This game has nothing to do with the Beanie Baby Breathing blog.  This is a game that involves two (maybe three, depending on your class) beanie babies.  I get the students into a circle (sitting).  I make sure all the students are touching knees. I don't want to the students to have a bunch of space in between them, nor do I want them on top of each other.   Once the students are all settled, I tell them the object of the game: watch the beanie baby, don't let it fall.  The students toss the beanie baby in the same order for the game.  Each student will get to catch and throw the beanie bag once.   The first time we do it together.  We repeat who gets the beanie baby every time we get to the next person.  So, repeat the order 22 times because I have 22 students.  This will help the students remember who got it and the order the beanie baby goes through.   The first time we do this we only use one beanie baby.   The second time, we start with one. Once, I see they are comfortab

 This is the last Mindful Monday.  All of the lessons were created and taught by MHA of Sheboygan County.  You need to be trained by them in order to receive the resources and videos. I highly recommend it.  Our last lesson was a video and coloring activity.  This lesson is about setting the intentions for the remaining for the school year.  My students created posters of their favorite mindful resource. These are up in our classroom to remind us how and when to use them! 

This lesson was taught with our writing lesson today.  My students have been struggling with what to write.  When I saw this lesson was coming up, I thought let's put them together.  This week is all about if you are struggling with feeling sad or mad a lot. Write a list of all of the things you are grateful for. After watching the video. I told my students to take out a piece of paper.   Before my students got to writing what they are grateful for, I had them do a body scan.  After our body scan they their mind was more clear for this assignment.   I showed my students my grateful list.  I wanted to show them an example in case they were struggling.  I know my students should be grateful for many things, but I don' t think they realize they should be grateful for them.  I wrote: my family, my home, my camper, my house, my food, my favorite sports team, etc. This got their mind thinking of the things in their life and they wrote down a ton of ideas.  I had them put this in thei