Fall is Here!

Since last Monday was the first day of Fall/ Autumn, we spent last week studying Fall. We learned about how the weather is in the Fall, clothing that we may wear in the Fall, and other important things about this beautiful season.

Below, Grace assist Ms. Stowe with reading a poem titled "Fall" to the class!

Ms. Stowe wrote a new song that we will sing at every calendar time during the Fall. It is titled "Oh, The Leaves are Falling Down". The students love it, especially since Ms. Stowe spreads artifical fall leaves all over them as they sing the song! When the song is over, our room looks like Fall has arrived!

La'Shawn and Grace ended up with leaves all over them. Grace gathers her leaves so that she can share them with La'Shawn!

Claire drops her leaves as she sings with Ms. Stowe!

Enoch and La'Shawn smile as Ms. Stowe drops leaves over their heads!

Fall is truly a beautiful time of the year! We look forward to learning more about this season and enjoying the wonderful weather outside!

Continuation of Pancakes, Pancakes!

When Ms. Sheppard came for group Speech last week, we continued our lesson on the book by Eric Carle, Pancakes, Pancakes! The students really loved this book during the previous therapy session!

As one of the activities related to this book, we talked about the difference between BIG pancakes and SMALL pancakes. The students were given a peice of paper that had either a big circle or a small circle. They were also given some playdoh. The activity required them to make a "pancake" that was the same size as the circle and then determine if it was big or small. Below, Claire poses for a picture as she makes her "pancake"!

Ms. Sheppard helps Grace make her "pancake"!
After we completed our playdoh activity, Ms. Sheppard passed out real pancakes. We had a pancake party! This was a lot of fun! Below, DeAsia, Ms. Malcom, La'Shawn, and Claire enjoy the pancake party!
Joyria loved her pancakes!
Enoch also enjoyed eating his pancakes!

Thanks so much Ms. Sheppard for such a wonderful and fun lesson! We learned so much and had a great time doing so!

DeAsia's Singing Debut!

You will have to push pause on the playlist (in the top righthand corner of the blog) to hear this video!

DeAsia is quite the singer and has a BEAUTIFUL voice! She absolutely loves one of the songs that Ms. Stowe wrote, titled "Friends". I took this video today of her singing it. She is singing alone because she gets so excited when we all sing it together that she won't sing. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did! What a beautiful talent!

Our School Mascot Revealed!

So, it's been two months and we haven't had time to take our first class picture! On Friday, we decided to go ahead and do this. It was just perfect because EVERYONE was wearing either red, white, or blue. So, we all headed out to the front of the school to take our first class picture!

Below, I (Ms. Malcom) pose for a picture with our class. I love this picture because it is so representative of all of the different personalities in our class. All of our students are special in their own ways! They are so precious!

Ms. Higdon and Ms. Stowe also pose for a picture with our class!

Okay... And the BIG MOMENT!!! Our school mascot has been chosen!

We are the SOUTH SALEM SPARTANS!!!!!!

Hello From Miss Piggy!

This is Miss Piggy! She is our class pet! Miss Piggy is a guinea pig. She loves carrots, Timothy Hay, and spending time with her friends at school!

Miss Piggy has quite the personality and is loved by many at school!

Calendar Time Fun!

Calendar time with that CRAZY Ms. Stowe is so much fun!! This is the time of day that we ALL look forward to! Ms. Stowe does such a wonderful job and will do ANYTHING to keep the students' interests (as you can see below)! :-)

On this particular day, it was raining outside. When talking about the weather, Ms. Stowe pops open the umbrella (Yes, we know it's bad luck). The students LOVED it!! Needless to say, they were very interested in Calendar Time that day!

We learn so much during Calendar Time. We learn the days of the week, the months of the year, how to read our sight words, the letter of the week, our letter sounds, our colors, our shapes, money identification, how to read a calendar, how to count, number identification, and SO MUCH MORE!!

We also say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing the National Anthem!

We are learning so much and getting smarter and smarter each day! Thanks Ms. Stowe for making Calendar Time so much fun!

Skating Competition!

Last Tuesday was our Special Olympics Skating Competition! We had a wonderful time and all of our kids were so excited to compete!

Below, Grace poses for the camera after completing her race. She was very proud of her 2nd place ribbon!

Claire (cheered on by Ms. Higdon) participates in her race. She did a wonderful job and was so determined to cross the finish line!

Claire and Ms. Higdon pose for the camera after Claire recieved her 1st place ribbon!

DeAsia poses for a picture with Ms. Malcom and her sister, Kelli, as she waits for her turn to race. Kelli was so nice to drive all the way from Griffin to spend time with our class. She had a wonderful time and looks forward to helping out during Special Olympics Bowling as well!

After the skating competition, all of the students gathered in the concession area for a hotdog, chip, and drink party. We really enjoyed this!

Kelli, Claire, and Ms. Higdon pose for the camera during our after-skating party!

Skating Competition was so much fun! We had a great time together! Congratulations to all of our students for their determination and hard work during their competitions!

Speech & Occupational Therapy!

I wanted to share these pictures to show you some of the other things that we do during our school day. We love Speech Therapy and learn so much there. Not only do our students get to go to the Speech room (which we call "The Talking Place"), but our Speech therapists also come into our room for Speech Therapy. Below, Ms. Shephard, the Speech paraprofessional, works with our students in our classroom!

On this particular day, we read a story called "Pancakes, Pancakes" by Eric Carle. Ms. Shephard created a great powerpoint presentation introducing some of the vocabulary words from the story. The students really enjoyed this lesson! Thanks so much Ms. Shephard for your hard work preparing this lesson for us!

We love our Occupational Therapist, Ms. LaVerne (in the far left corner of the picture below). We have a great time when she comes to our classroom and the students work very hard for her during their individual Occupational Therapy sessions. Ms. Malcom worked with Ms. LaVerne two years ago and she is definitely one of Ms. Malcom's favorite Occupational Therapists. Ms. Malcom was so happy when she found out that Ms. LaVerne was going to be our Occupational Therapist at South Salem!

Ms. Adams is our Speech Language Pathologist at South Salem. She is very knowledgable and has provided Speech Therapy to people for a long time. Ms. Adams is very kind and patient with our students. The students love going to Speech Therapy, in her room, when it is their turn to go.

For the last couple of weeks, Ms. Adams has been working with our students on how to say and sign "I want ____", "I eat ____", as well as answer "Yes" and "No" appropriately. Below, Joyria works with Ms. Adams on signing "I eat ___".

All of our kids have improved, already this year, thanks to the hard work of all of our therapists. Thanks to all of you!!

Colors All Around!

Last week, we began a new theme, Colors All Around. This theme will last several weeks. In this theme, we will be learning about the different colors! I wanted to share these pictures because our students really worked hard on this activity.

On this particular day, we were learning about the color blue.
La'Shawn smiles for the camera as he works on his color blue art project!

Enoch loves art time and works so hard to make sure that his project is perfect!

Ms. Higdon looks on as Claire and Enoch complete their art projects. This color blue page will be the first page in a color book that each student will make!

Ms. Stowe helps Joyria complete her art project!

Every day that we have art, we will work on a page in our books that represent a different color! I can't wait to see the final products!!

Happy Birthday Grace and Claire!

Last week, Grace and Claire had a birthday! Both girls turned 8 years old!

Below, Claire opens her gift from the class! She got a hair bow set!

Ms. Mayes (one of our favorite substitutes) helps Grace open her gift. She also got a hair bow set! Since we had skating this same day, we waited until lunch time to eat the cupcakes that Ms. Robbins (Grace and Claire's mom) sent for our class to enjoy!

Thanks so much Ms. Robbins and Happy Birthday Grace and Claire!

Happy Anniversary Mr. & Mrs. Stowe!

Yesterday (Friday) was the Anniversary of Mr. & Mrs. Stowe (Mr. John & Mrs. Stowe). On this date, they celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary! WOW!!

Mr. John was so sweet and sent Mrs. Stowe some beautiful flowers!!

Congratulations to you both!! We wish you continued happiness for years to come!

Our Special Visitors!

After all of the students left on Friday, Ms. Malcom and Ms. Stowe had two very special visitors. Eric, one of our students from last year, and his mother, Ms. Summers, visited us at our new school. Although, we keep in touch with Ms. Summers and Eric pretty often, we were so happy to see both of them.

Below, Ms. Summers, Eric, and Ms. Stowe pose for a picture! As you can tell by the bag in Eric's hand, it was his birthday. Eric turned 14 years old yesterday!

Eric was one of Ms. Malcom's students that she will always remember! It was very hard watching him graduate last year (after being his teacher for two years) but she I am so happy to hear that he is doing well in middle school!

Thanks so much Ms. Summers and Eric for coming by to visit us!! We miss you both very much!

Happy 14th Birthday Eric!

A Special Reader!

On Friday, we had a very special friend come to our class to read to us. She is from Ms. Frix's 3rd grade class and she asked to come read to our class as a reward for great behavior. How sweet!

Since it was rest time when she came, we allowed her (with assistance from Ms. Higdon) to pull individual students out in the hall to read to them. Below, DeAsia listens as our special reader reads "How Do Dinosaurs Go To School?". It was a great book!

Our special reader poses for a picture with the students that she was able to read to that day! They greatly enjoyed spending time with her and listening to her read!

Thanks so much for choosing to come and spend time with our class!

Hard at Work!

Below are some pictures of our hard work this week!

Grace gets busy completing her Morning Work after eating her breakfast!

Ms. Higdon and Enoch work on sorting shapes by size!

Ms. Malcom works with the group on naming words for objects!

We have also been learning about the Five Senses. Our model, "Jack" (Ms. Malcom is not a great artist), needs eyes, ears, a nose, mouth, and hands in order to have all of his Five Senses. On this day, we learned about Hearing. Joyria is putting the ears on "Jack".

Ms. Stowe and La'Shawn work on pre-handwriting skills!

Ms. Malcom and DeAsia work on counting objects!


All in all, it was a great week! We worked hard and learned so much!

Learning the Procedures!

Ahhh, it's been a great week! We have worked hard on learning our classroom responsibilities and procedures and our hard work is finally paying off. All of our students have become responsible students (by learning the rules and following them).

Below, DeAsia leads the class line and shows the rest of the class how we stand in line "South Salem Style". "South Salem Style" means that we stand in a straight line, with our hands behind our back and a bubble in our mouths.

Joyria, Enoch, Claire, and La'Shawn follow DeAsia's lead and line up (to go home) with their hands behind their back and a bubble in their mouths! As you see, we have worked very hard on this!

It has taken us an entire month, but we have finally learned that we sit "Criss-Cross Applesauce", meaning our legs crossed, at calendar time. A month ago, I would have never believed that we could all be sitting "Criss-Cross Applesauce". I had to take this picture as evidence that it could be done.

Each student in our class has their own individual daily schedule. Each activity that they will participate in during the day in represented by a picture card. When the activity is finished, I (Ms. Malcom) will say "_____ is Finished. Check your schedule!". Each student will go to their schedule, take off the completed activity, put the picture card in the "Finished" bucket, and look at what will happen next. This procedure took a while to learn. However, the students are doing very well with it now.

Below, Claire checks her schedule!

Enoch poses for the camera as he checks his schedule! He is so proud to be able to do this with minimal assistance.

I am so proud of all of our students for working so hard to learn the classroom procedures!