Conscious Discipline....

I have been dabbling in Conscious Discipline for the past few years after a chance meeting with Dr. Becky Bailey a few years ago. Ever since meeting her I have wanted to study with her at her Summer learning institute. Well this past summer...I got the chance! I was so excited to go! It was the most amazing experience! I learned so much about the brain, how children learn and how important self regulation and emotional well being is to learning! I now have totally embraced Conscious Discipline in my entire classroom and it has changed how I teach! Here is a look at some of the important components I use in my redesigned Conscious Discipline classroom!

This is our classroom Safe Place. It is a space where children can choose to go when they need to get a hold of their emotions. They learn how to use the safe place properly so it becomes a very special place in our classroom. It is comfortable and cozy. Frank the bear and Brownie the bear live in the Safe Place. The green basket has photo albums of our family members and the purple basket has all kinds of tools for children to use to gain their composure. There are specific steps for the children to follow when they go to the Safe Place. So far my children have embraced the Safe place! 

This is the Welcome bulletin board for the first day of school. We refer to ourselves as The Groovy Grade One Classroom Family. 

This is our "Heart" board. Each day the children arrive at school, they bring me their heart and I am the safe keeper of their heart for the day. 

This is our "Good-Bye ritual" poem. At the end of each school day we say this poem together then the Good bye wisher of the week says "Have a good night" to each child as they leave. I also wish them a good night and tell them that I will see them tomorrow. 

There are many, many things I do through out the day in relation to Conscious Discipline. I will try to take some photos of other rituals and routines that we do. 

I LOVE Conscious Discipline! Thank you Dr. Bailey for changing my life so I can help my students to become better learners and better at handling the ups and downs of life! 

This is Dr. Bailey and me! She is so awesome! 

A new school year is here!

It has taken me a little while to get myself organized so I can create a post! I've been so busy with things in my personal life! Anyway... The new year is here and I have a lovely little bunch of kids in my class!
Science has always been one of my favourite subjects to teach! Here are photos of my little sweeties being scientists! We are working on the colours unit, so what a fun way to explore colour mixing with mini explosions! So FUN! Look how engaged they are!

How can you get the piggy into the pen?

We have been playing with science again! I love science with young children! 
We explored FORCE and MOTION. 
Not really officially part of our curriculum, but it can be part of science inquiry, so I think it fits! 
So I asked my children...How can you get your piggy into it's pen? 
Then I gave them a straw, a pompom and a paper plate. 
The children then "experimented" and tried out various ways to get the pig into the pen. It was fascinating to watch! Some tried to swat the pom pom with the straw and others tried to scoop the pom pom.  Then, quite by "accident" one of the children was playing with her straw and sucked the air out and picked up the pig and put it on the plate! She was so excited she jumped up and told everyone exactly how to do it! So cute! Then everyone tried it. 
Then one child discovered that the paper plate can move when you blow a cushion of air underneath the plate! So exciting! 
We decided to have races down the hallway using the paper plates, straws and taking the piggy pom poms for a ride! SUPER FUN!

Look! I did it! 

A cushion of air underneath the plate and it can MOVE! COOL!

Word Surgery!

We turned into doctors and performed word surgery! 
These particular words were having some pain, so we needed to remove part of the word and "stitch" the words back together with an apostrophe. 
We were working on CONTRACTIONS! 
To make it more fun, we wore special doctor masks. It was a lot of fun! 

Leapin' Lizards!!

As the year winds down, we are still in full learning mode! This past week we had a wonderful visit from A Reptile Show! It was great and the children learned so much! The presentation focused on the needs of these unique animals and just how difficult they are to care for. 
The man doing the presentation,(Jason) rescues various reptiles and cares for them and then finds them a new home or keeps them and takes them around to teach children about reptiles. It was excellent! 

This tortoise was rescued and brought back to health

This monitor lizard was raised from a tiny little lizard and he could get even bigger! 

This beautiful snake is almost extinct! There are very few left in the wild.

The children got to touch each one of the animals. It was interesting to listen to the children talk about how the animals skin felt, words like smooth, bumpy and cool.  

Most children were surprised that the snakes were not slimy at all! 

When pigs fly!!!

Our piggies are finished and they are up and flying around our room! We worked on painting them and adding in special details to make our pigs UNIQUE! They are so adorable! 
We began by painting them a bright pink! We hot glued a curly pink tail and then added things like ribbon rosettes, fake flowers, glitter and other details! One even had a Viking helmet made out of paper and one had a cool eye patch! He was a pirate flying pig! 

hot gluing the tails on!

3 little piggy tails!

Painting our piggies.

Add more paint!

Cover up all those white spots! 

Look how cute we are!!

Waiting on the drying trays before we take flight!

Flying pirate piggy! Notice the eye patch!

Flying around the room! 

Papier Mache .... the modified way!

Yes...I am a little crazy! I started a papier mache project with my kids. It actually wasn't that bad! I mixed white glue (from the dollar store) with water. Then the kids dipped strips of white photocopy paper into the glue mixture and wrapped it around a mini pop bottle. 
                                         We are making little flying PIGS! 
Right now they are drying and we will paint them next week and add details. Then we will hang them from the ceiling in our classroom! They look so cute right now and they aren't even painted yet! I will take photos of the finished product as soon as they are FLYING around our room! 

We started our pig making by tightly rolling paper legs and then hot gluing them to the mini bottles. Then we cut out ears and hot glued the ear shapes on.

Then we papier mached!! 

Some of my little darlings really did not like the feeling of the "goopy" glue, so they 

needed a little help to get going with the wrapping and to show them that the glue wasn't all that bad! So I dove right in too! 

I love the BIG ears on this one! 

Aren't they so cute? 

Everyone wanted to make one, so we had them drying everywhere! Some were on trays, some were on our drying rack. 

Can't wait till they are painted up and detailed and then FLYING!