Happy Birthday Joyria!

Last Thursday, Joyria had a birthday! It was a very special day because Joyria loves birthdays! She says "Happy Birthday" to everyone that enters our classroom and everyone that she sees in the hallway. She also sings "Happy Birthday to You" every single day!! Therefore, we had to make this a VERY SPECIAL DAY!! It was Joyria's day!

As a birthday treat, we enjoyed Little Debbie's Fudge Rounds! Yum!! Below, Claire and DeAsia enjoy their birthday treats!

After enjoying our treats, it was time for Joyria to open her gifts!

From her friends in Ms. Malcom's class she got a hair peice set and a really cool pencil case!

Of course we had to take our traditional birthday picture. As you can see we haven't yet conquered the concept of everyone looking at the camera at the same time! We'll keep working on it though. Either way, any picture that we take as a class is precious! :-)

When we were out on the playground, we had a very special visitor. Kelli, Ms. Malcom's sister, drove all the way from Griffin to be a part of Joyria's special day. She brought Joyria a present in a very large box! I wonder what it is!

What?? A crock pot????? Ha! Ha!! Kelli is getting married soon and "borrowed" one of the boxes that one of her presents came in. Ha! Ha! We kept asking Joyria what she was going to cook us in her crock pot!

In the crock pot box was lots of little birthday bags. In each birthday bag was a gift. Joyria got a teddy bear, clothes for her teddy bear, and a coloring book. She was very excited to open all of these presents and loved her teddy bear best of all!

Below, Joyria poses for a picture with Kelli! Thank you Kelli for making Joyria's day so special!

At lunch, our friend Mr. Michael stood up in one of the chairs and yelled "Hey Everybody! It's Joy's Birthday!". Everyone cheered and the entire cafeteria (full of 5th graders) sang "Happy Birthday" to Joyria. We made her stand up and she just smiled in shock the entire time! It was such a special moment! Ms. Higdon, Ms. Stowe, and I had tears in our eyes!

I think that this will definitely be a birthday that Joyria will always remember. It will definitely be one that I always remember!

Playground Fun!

Due to the beautiful weather, we went out to the playground for the first time (that we were able to enjoy) last week. We went one other time this year but it was way to hot to enjoy!

Joyria, Enoch, and Claire chased each other up and down the playground equipment! They had so much fun playing together!

Ms. Higdon and Ms. Stowe pose for a picture together! You can tell by the smile on their faces that it was a beautiful day!

Grace loved being outside! She even had a couple of 4th grade students come up and talk to her! She loved that attention!
Ms. Malcom and Grace pose for a picture!
La'Shawn and Grace enjoyed playing together on a blanket while out on the playground. I had to share this picture. They are actually holding hands (although it is hard to see). They have become great friends!

Joyria had a great time sliding down the slide!

Enoch smiles for a picture as he gets ready to go down the slide!

Claire poses for the camera as she pretends that she is driving a car! Ms. Malcom was also in her "car" and told her that she was driving way to fast! :-) She thought that it was so funny!

La'Shawn smiles as he rests in the sun! As soon as we sat him on the blanket, he laid on his back to sun bathe!

DeAsia loves climbing as high as she can on the jungle gym!

As you can see we had a great time on the playground last week. With the beautiful Fall weather, we look forward to this time everyday!

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!!