May 12, 2009

Be sure to check the planner pocket for important information on our personal safety unit. During these lessons, your child will learn standard names for private body parts and will learn when it is OK to say no to an adult or older child.

These lessons often bring on the sillies if children are embarrassed by the topics.

On another level of safety, we had a great discussion about what to do if we have an earthquake during school hours. The children had some excellent questions:

What can we do if the door won't open?
What if we aren't in the classroom when the shaking starts?

They also know what to do if the adult is injured and can't help them. (Count to 60 after the shaking stops, follow the designated student to safety, and if you are the "door person," tell an adult that there is someone injured in the building.) We spent a lot of time talking about how important it is to behave calmly and to keep everyone around us safe in an emergency.

You can be proud of the responsible attitude your child has shown during the discussions.

May 11

Today was a day for changes.

We were assigned to new reading groups.

That meant we had to move some furniture in our classroom.

That meant we had to have a new seating plan for our desks and also for our carpet time. (Our carpet time is now lino time.)

We also read about earthquakes and practiced what to do if one happened at school. We talked, too, about what to do at home if we felt an earthquake there. We know it's serious, but we don't want to be too scared.

You can help by talking about what your family would do during and after a quake.