This request may find you busy preparing for the upcoming holidays and sharing special celebrations with family and friends. It is our hope, however, that your family will reserve some time to help with our community service project.

Our community service activity this month is donating “Blizzard Boxes” to Meals on Wheels. We are welcoming Blizzard Boxes until Monday, December 17th. A Meals on Wheels representative will be joining us for an assembly to personally receive the boxes and thank the children for their kindness.

A BLIZZARD BOX is an assortment of donated non-perishable food items packed into shoeboxes. Refer to Blizzard Boxes Suggested Food List 2018 to find out all the details, including the suggested foods. Please be sure to check product expiration date. NO fresh fruit or vegetables please!

Please wrap the lids separately from the boxes – wrap the top of the shoe box separately from the bottom of the shoe box (no boot boxes please) in grocery bag paper in order to make sure contents are easily accessible. Do not put any decorations on the box.

Children can use their imagination to draw pictures on the paper that seniors would enjoy receiving! The BLIZZARD BOXES will be delivered to the recipients of the Home Delivered Meals Program if regular food deliveries are halted due to weather related or other emergencies.

Consider creating a BLIZZARD BOX with your family. Drop off your BLIZZARD BOX at William O. Schaefer (WOS), 140 Lester Drive, Tappan, New York between Tuesday, December 4th and Monday, December 17th.

Thank you in advance for giving so generously to the seniors in our community during this winter season.
Questions can be forwarded to hhill@socsd.org, ebarsanti@socsd.org, ccosgrove@socsd.org.
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We enjoyed matching in our Halloween parade! Have a safe and happy Halloween!

We are learning about our brains.

We learned about three parts of the brain.  The amygdala reacts to fear, danger and threat, and regulates our emotional state by acting as the brain’s “guard dog,” protecting us from threats.  But when a child is in a negative emotional state (stressed, fearful,) the amygdala prevents input from being passed along, essentially blocking higher level thinking and learning.

The hippocampus is our “memory keeper,” and also helps to manage our response to fear and stress.

The prefrontal cortex is the thinking, learning and reasoning center of the brain- our “wise old owl.”  This part of the brain controls our decision making, focuses our attention and allows us to learn to read, write, compute, analyze, predict, comprehend and interpret.

Learning how these parts of the brain help children to understand how their brains respond to stress and prepares them for creating a calm mindset set for thoughtful decision making, led by the prefrontal cortex.

We learned that we can use our hand to help us learn about the parts of the brain.

Here is a video we watched together in class.  We talked about how breathing can help us to be in control of our emotions.

Here is a fun song about the brain:

This is an example of the lesson I taught to introduce the brain and its parts:

Every night in the United States an estimated 600,000 people live on the streets. This October, SoulPancake and Kid President want 2 million people to prove that even the smallest acts of love, like donating a pair of socks, can make a big difference in the lives of our neighbors who are homeless.

Socktober was launched by Kid President creator Brad Montague five years ago. It’s a movement to get kids and grown-ups to help the homeless in an easy, fun way.

Last year, more than 10,000 schools, families, businesses, and churches rallied together to bring Socktober to life. People from every state and continent have taken part in Socktober! This year, William O. Schaefer is participating and we are having a “Sock Drive” until the last week in October!

All of the socks we collect as a community will be donated to a local shelter.

We had so much fun on our trip to Demarest Farm last week. We had a delicious snack of apple cider and doughnuts, went on a hayride up to the pumpkin patch, picked our own pumpkins, played on the playground and got to see some animals! Thank you to our parents that helped out! We had a wonderful time, as you can see from all these happy faces.

Acceptance is allowing someone to become part of a group or community and making them feel welcome.

Diversity is the understanding that each person is unique, and recognizing our individual differences. These differences might include: ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies.

Assembly Read Aloud: Perfectly Norman by Tom Percival

More books related to the theme of ACCEPTANCE:

Sing a few catchy songs about ACCEPTANCE:

• Harry Kindergarten-Acceptance
• Kindness Song in Sign Language
• Friend Song
• Jack Johnson We Are Gonna Be Friends
• Mr. Stanley: Tolerance
• Everyone is Different song

It’s certainly easier to make assumptions about people than it is to spend time getting to know someone. SoulPancake wanted to put assumptions to the test to see what we’re missing out on because we’re so busy assuming we already “know” a person. Watch the video below and discover why you should never judge a book.

Listen to a few a YouTube books about ACCEPTANCE!
How Full is Your Bucket

Octicorn

Whoever You Are

A Rainbow of Friends

The Big Orange Splot

The Sneetches Video

Same Same But Different

It’s Okay to be Different

We will be learning about being mindful here in kindergarten in the next coming weeks and then practicing it throughout the year.  We learn that being mindful means listening to our bodies and our emotions; it’s being in tune with ourselves.  Mindfulness also means to be calm.  Today we started to learn about feeling calm.  We talked about how sometimes we may feel cranky or upset, and it’s almost like we have a monster inside us.  We practiced deep breathing to help us feel calm again.  Here is a song that we listened to to help us with our deep breathing.  We called it “belly breathing.”

We were also introduced to our “Calm Down Corner” where we can go if we are feeling upset or cranky and need to practice belly breathing to calm down again.  We look forward to learning more about mindfulness together and giving our little ones some strategies to use to help them when they need them.

I am looking forward to a wonderful year with your amazing children this year!  I hope to help them learn and grow in so many ways.  I would like to share a link for you to read through some of the curriculum that we will be moving through this year in kindergarten.  Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YcwJRKLANoMvOcvqVYfrqTFhXgh6fBtj6dvd2tfmleQ/edit#slide=id.p8

Have a wonderful evening!

Set SAIL for a Respectful Year!
Be respectful!

Songs:

We Know the Way (Moana):

Respect Song:

Sesame Street Respect:

Bruno Mars You Can Count on Me:

Read Aloud YouTube Videos:

Are You Respectful Today Video:

Me First by Helen Lester:

What is a Friend:

Recess Queen:

Same Same But Different:

Support our school wide character ed program with the following parent resources:

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The end of the year brings some fun activities in kindergarten (although, we have fun all year in kindergarten😉).  We had our field day and it was so much fun! Our class chose to be the “Super Friends,” as we have worked hard at being kind and caring friends all year who know how to solve problems and encourage and help each other. We designed what we would look like as superheroes and had so much fun running in the field day races and cheering on our friends.

We also get to have Gym City, where we get to drive scooters through the gymnasium. We also take turns directing traffic, going through the car wash, dancing and even reading at the Gym City library. These are some of our favorite activities in the gym. Thanks to our amazing coaches- Coach Steingasser and Coach Counihan for putting together these great events!