After seven days of school we are mastering basic routines like lining up, eating snack, and doing jobs and packing up at the end of the day (everyone did a fantastic job of this today)! We are now beginning our discussion of broader classroom norms so that everyone can have a fantastic school year. We read the book Officer Buckle and Gloria today, by Peggy Rathmun and brainstormed our own list of safety tips or rules to live by for the classroom. After today our list is the following: wear shoes, walk inside, respect living things, stay with the class, listen, no weapons in school (even pretend), don't stand on furniture, always tell the truth, sit down on swings, respect materials, use good manners, and be nice to each other. I love the variety of things the children thought of as they were considering a safe classroom environment. Obviously this list is much to long to become our list of class rules. We will discuss these further in the coming days and talk about ways we can refine the list but still have all of these things included. We also read the book Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud, about the importance of treating others with kindness. We will also continue this conversation throughout the year.

We have continued to share artifact bags and are a little more than halfway through the class. It's been really fun to see what each child brings in and learn a little more about their families and interests. As we do this we are working on focusing all of our attention on the person sharing, listening carefully to think of questions that can help us learn even more about the sharer. It can be very hard for five year olds (and older people as well!) to focus their thoughts on another person without bringing it back to themselves. We have gotten better and better at this each day.