Kindness. Giving. Joy. These are the key points that we keep coming back to in our classroom as we work on our Community Theme this month. It all started with letter writing. Akeem challenged each of us to write two letters; one to a classmate and one to a member of our community. The letters should make the person feel good and let them know that you appreciate them and the work that they do. The children were very excited to do this. Many of them wanted to write more than two letters so we have left extra paper out all month. Everyone enjoyed handing out the letters to classmates, and giving their letters to other people in the community. Some were for students in other classes, other teachers in the school or for moms and dads, brothers and sisters. The crossing guard got one. Someone wrote a letter to their neighbour. A few people wanted to write letters to an extended community, like Vancouver Canucks players and Prime Minister Trudeau. Even Justin Bieber got a letter thanking him for his music. Akeem Haynes got a letter too!
Together with Ms. Griffin's class, we decided to facilitate an opportunity for our students to connect with residents of a local seniors home. We wrote another letter inviting the residents to our school for a visit. Meanwhile, we got to work making gifts for them. We have been very busy working on these snuggly, fleece blankets! It was interesting when we started because some of the children thought that they should be getting paid for all of this work. It was a perfect opportunity for a lesson in giving. We talked about different kinds of giving, like buying presents for people or giving letters like we had before. We also talked about giving time, and giving a piece of our hearts. It was a wonderful discussion about how good you feel when you do something nice for someone else. It is a lesson that I think they will understand even more when they actually give these blankets, give their time and share a special moment with someone new. When our visitors come to our school on Dec.7, we will give them a tour, read stories, sing a "Happy Holidays" song and give them the blankets we have made. We can't wait! We will update you all again after that, with pictures and videos from the big day!
Kindness. Giving. Joy. These are the key points that we keep coming back to in our classroom as we work on our Community Theme this month. It all started with letter writing. Akeem challenged each of us to write two letters; one to a classmate and one to a member of our community. The letters should make the person feel good and let them know that you appreciate them and the work that they do. The children were very excited to do this. Many of them wanted to write more than two letters so we have left extra paper out all month. Everyone enjoyed handing out the letters to classmates, and giving their letters to other people in the community. Some were for students in other classes, other teachers in the school or for moms and dads, brothers and sisters. The crossing guard got one. Someone wrote a letter to their neighbour. A few people wanted to write letters to an extended community, like Vancouver Canucks players and Prime Minister Trudeau. Even Justin Bieber got a letter thanking him for his music. Akeem Haynes got a letter too! 
Together with Ms. Griffin's class, we decided to facilitate an opportunity for our students to connect with residents of a local seniors home. We wrote another letter inviting the residents to our school for a visit. Meanwhile, we got to work making gifts for them. We have been very busy working on these snuggly, fleece blankets! It was interesting when we started because some of the children thought that they should be getting paid for all of this work. It was a perfect opportunity for a lesson in giving. We talked about different kinds of giving, like buying presents for people or giving letters like we had before. We also talked about giving time, and giving a piece of our hearts. It was a wonderful discussion about how good you feel when you do something nice for someone else. It is a lesson that I think they will understand even more when they actually give these blankets, give their time and share a special moment with someone new. When our visitors come to our school on Dec.7, we will give them a tour, read stories, sing a "Happy Holidays" song and give them the blankets we have made. We can't wait! We will update you all again after that, with pictures and videos from the big day! 
No comments:
Post a Comment