Thursday, December 15, 2016
Community - Monthly Summary
Community in our Kindergarten class
We are continually working on our Classroom Champion lessons, and growing more self-aware each month. Since the beginning of November we have been looking at our community and how we can be positive members of the communities that we are involved in. To start the discussion around the idea of community, we discussed the important people in our lives and the groups we are involved in, soccer teams, school, home, bhangra dance, etc. The students, with the help of their buddies, wrote notes of appreciation to people in our lives. Many students wrote to Akeem, some wrote to their buddies, some wrote to family members and some to their friends.
To extend our idea of community to others we may not connect with on a regular basis, we have written Christmas cards, with lovely drawings in them, for Grandma's and Grandpa's in a local nursing home who may not get to see family this holiday season. It challenged the students to think beyond their immediate surroundings, to others that live in the same community as us, even though we do not know them, and to extend kindness to them, with something as simple as a drawing and a note.
As an annual tradition our school has chosen to support several families for the Christmas season. The families in the school donate food, gifts and essentials to our Christmas families that may be having a difficult time this season. As a class, we have discussed how we are helping our christmas hamper families in our school by providing them with food and toys for children who may not have as much as we do.
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas also helped us learn how Christmas is not about presents, but about quality family time and the love we have in our hearts. We read the book, wrote him letters telling him how we would make him grin by being his friend, sharing with him, playing with him, inviting him to dinner, and many other ideas! Then the Grinch 'visited' our classroom one night and left us a note thanking us for our friendship and many thoughts of kindness. He even left us a treat (Grinch Milkshakes) and some Grinch fur which was all over the class! We then related these ideas back to how we can be positive members of our community by extending our ideas of kindness to everyone.
Again, we loved watching our video with Akeem and meeting his challenges of writing notes of thanks to people in our lives. We were THRILLED to interact with Akeem during our live chat!
We are looking forward to our break and starting back up with our Classroom Champions lessons in January.
We are continually working on our Classroom Champion lessons, and growing more self-aware each month. Since the beginning of November we have been looking at our community and how we can be positive members of the communities that we are involved in. To start the discussion around the idea of community, we discussed the important people in our lives and the groups we are involved in, soccer teams, school, home, bhangra dance, etc. The students, with the help of their buddies, wrote notes of appreciation to people in our lives. Many students wrote to Akeem, some wrote to their buddies, some wrote to family members and some to their friends. 
To extend our idea of community to others we may not connect with on a regular basis, we have written Christmas cards, with lovely drawings in them, for Grandma's and Grandpa's in a local nursing home who may not get to see family this holiday season. It challenged the students to think beyond their immediate surroundings, to others that live in the same community as us, even though we do not know them, and to extend kindness to them, with something as simple as a drawing and a note.
As an annual tradition our school has chosen to support several families for the Christmas season. The families in the school donate food, gifts and essentials to our Christmas families that may be having a difficult time this season. As a class, we have discussed how we are helping our christmas hamper families in our school by providing them with food and toys for children who may not have as much as we do.
Again, we loved watching our video with Akeem and meeting his challenges of writing notes of thanks to people in our lives. We were THRILLED to interact with Akeem during our live chat!
We are looking forward to our break and starting back up with our Classroom Champions lessons in January.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)