Yay welcome back from your holiday! I hope you all had as much fun as I did.
We had a fun week. On Friday I invited my mother in for a visit and the kids enjoyed having her around. She will be back to visit again. She is also a kindergarten teacher back in Canada.

We made sticky rice-ball soup and lanterns for our lantern festival.

We also check up on the flowers we planted before Chinese Newyear, but unfortunately none of them have sprouted yet. We added more seeds to the pot and maybe these ones will grow better.

This week in reading class we started a new book that they are going to love reading. It is a semester ahead of schedule for the class, but I feel they will be able to do it. So far they already can read most of the words in the first story.

In Science class this week we planted some flowers for our new greenhouse. The children already know what plants need to grow, but it was a good review for them. We also started creating a book about our five senses. So far we are finished sight and hearing.

In phonics we are still practicing how to differentiate between short i and short a sounds in short three letter words.

August surprised me this week during reading class. We played a game where the students have to read a line from the story before they can have their turn. It was Jason's turn and August wanted Jason to have a turn so he helped Jason read the page. Not only does this show that August is improving, but he is displaying more thoughtful behavior.

I saw signs of improvement in Elaine's social behavior this week. Children are talking to her more. She is still very dependent on the teachers on duty during play time, but it is improving.

Christine and Leetrue are getting into more and more trouble together lately. They are very noisy at inappropriate times during the day. This is mostly due to the fact that when they are talking, they want EVERYONE to hear what they have to say.

Theresa is well behaved, but has been taking longer than usual to finish her lunch. It is taking an hour just to eat. We'll try again next week.

It was lovely seeing Ryan again. The students miss him and can't wait to have him back. I think the break he is taking will do him some good. We can't forget how young he is and how mature he has gotten.

Jason has a lot of fun at school. I am trying hard to make him understand the right place and the right time to act silly. I just need to remain consistent with how I deal with him so I can change his thinking pattern.

I am so impressed with Ivy. She is already reading and she is always well behaved. She is a real pleasure to teach and will become a great role-model for her classmates.

I have had no problems this week with Jae's bossiness. Part of the reason is students are becoming less likely to fight over sitting beside her. She is now beginning to understand that kindness is a better way to make and keep friends than dominance.

We had an interesting first week to the new semester.

In science class, we learned about scientists and what they do. One of the things they do is measure. So we pretended to be scientists and we measured a whole bunch of things.

In Math class we played a leapfrog game and counted by 2's all the way to twenty! The students are getting better at it.

In Phonics class we learned to distinguish the middle sounds of words. All of the words were one syllable words but all of the class can get the right answer most of the time. We also took out the picture dictionary for the first time and students had to find some words in the dictionary using the alphabet as a guide. They did very well for their first time.

Christine was great. She has started to become able to sound out words. She was able to spell the word panda in class with my help sounding it out.

Jae is doing well academically, but her classroom manners and behavior is beginning to slip. She makes some mean comments to her classmates and has been talking while the teacher is talking especially with Theresa. I have had to separate the two of them often this week and it is the first time I have had to take such steps with either of them.

Theresa and Jae have become even closer in the last little while than before. I want to encourage them to be good friends, but they must know that being good friends should not be about excluding others or talking over the teacher.

August is getting much better in phonics. The puzzle pieces seem to be falling into place for him.

Jason has developed a habit of playing with his fingernails during class. This keeps his attention away from what he should be learning.

Leetrue talks very loud in class and when I am trying to get the class's attention, he often will continue to talk and even talk louder. It gets him in trouble quite often and it is an issue that is very difficult for him to fix.

Elaine has a habit of standing up in the middle of class and walking up to me to tell me something like how much she misses her mother or that she needs to blow her nose. She needs to learn how to raise her hand when she needs something.

Ivy is doing just fine. She is easily keeping up with the level of the class. Although her speaking ability is not quite as high as the others, her understanding, behavior and phonics/reading/writing level is right on!