4 by 4 breathing

Our day started out kind of crazy so we learned a new tool for our Zones of Regulation tool kit...4 by 4 breathing. You take 4 counts to breathe in through your nose, hold it for 4 counts and then release it for 4 counts through your mouth. We used this to "calm our chaos" as I called it! :) We also took a little extra time to make sure that our goals were what was actually needed to keep our behavior "Above the Line" and not straddling the line as some have been lately...Not necessarily "Below the Line" but not "Above the Line." In Word Study, we corrected misspelled words. This was actually pretty comical because they thought some of the words were spelled correctly and started getting confused for how they should be spelled...We had some time for free writing after that and then read more from The City of Ember. Lina is still thinking that the "Instructions" are important so she showed them to her friend, Lizzie, but she didn't care so she wrote a letter to the Mayor about them, but never heard back from him. She finally decided that she's going to talk to Doon-he'll for sure help her out! In Reader's Workshop, we are going to begin focusing on writing about our reading by writing letters to me each week about what they are reading independently. Their first letter is due tomorrow and then after that, they will have one day each week to work on their letter. Hopefully, this correspondence will aid in the improvement of their writing skills and sharing their thinking about reading in writing. Today was gym, lunch and recess. After writing our assignments down (has your child checked in with you about their 30-book challenge yet??) and a little quiet time, we worked with symmetry in Math Workshop. We did some straight mathematics with understanding symmetry but then had some fun with our names. We have decided to join the Great Ohio Mail Race where we are writing to the 88 counties in Ohio (all 3 classes) and hopefully, they'll be writing us back! Students have some homework for finding some information about Franklin County to put in our letters. We ended our day with a few minutes of Wonder Time.