Valentine's Week

I have heard many different opinions of whether or not we should celebrate Valentine's Day, particularly from my husband :), but I like to spend the week talking about tolerance and celebrating people who we love, but forget to tell. This lesson has a lot packed into one, but we start out with the word of the week, TOLERANCE and how that relates to love. Then we read the book, When I'm Feeling Loved by Trace Moroney.

I particularly LOVE this page in the book. We stop and talk about what makes someone feel loved and how we can make others feel love. We make hearts with our hands, put them over our chest, then bounce it out to someone else. I model by drawing this on the board.

It starts with ME!

 After reading the book, I have the students stop and close their eyes for a minute and think about all the people that they love. I encourage them to count them on their fingers as they go (ASSETS, ASSETS, ASSETS!) After about a minute, I have them think of one person they love, but have failed to tell for a long time. We go around the room and each person names who that one person is. Then we go back to our discussion about HOW we can show love, and I teach them how to cut out a perfect heart from a folded piece of paper. Then we turn it into an animal and come up with a cheesy phrase for our Valentine.

Dressing for the Weather

We have a large number of refugee families at our school from much warmer parts of the world, so the winters are a struggle for them at first. I do a whole group lesson with Pre-K-2nd grade classes about dressing for the weather. We read the book, "Froggy Gets Dressed" by Jonathan London and follow-up with one of two activities. For the 2nd graders, I used clay and had them make a snowman and then dress them with all the essentials described in the book. After, they get to take their piece of clay home which is a huge WIN for them! For the younger grades, I place a long piece of black butcher paper on the floor or covering their desks. They each sit around the paper and have to share the space to make their picture. I then model how to draw a snowman and we discuss all the winter essentials to add as we go. I then allow them time to draw in the snow and make additions to the paper. It makes for a really cute display. 

My Wish for the World

After the Sandy Hook tragedy, we had a discussion with some of our kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade students about what their wish for the world would be.  We wanted to be respectful of the children who did not know much about what happened.  But we also wanted to give our students a voice and a chance to look at the world with hopeful eyes.  These are mostly works in progress, but we thought we would share a few.

Purple Hand Pledge - Part II

Our kindergarten class took The Purple Hand Pledge last week.  We read Amanda Haan's, I Call My Hand Gentle, along with Hands Are Not For Hitting by Martine Agassi.  I am so lucky to work with such a wonderful kindergarten team!  They are so supportive and love to participate in my Guidance lessons.  We will display our Purple Hand Pledges for everyone to see!

Dream Plans - Part II

Students had a lot of fun reflecting on and creating their Dream Plans.  Every student could put his/her own creative spin on this project.  Here are some of our finished products:

Bullying: Small Group

Piggy-Back Bullying Small Group Idea:

Using the Purple Hand Pledge, brainstorm a list of appropriate ways to use our hands. Put these ideas into wordle.net and create word art for the students to display in their classroom. Tips: The more times you type the word, the larger it appears. If you want the words to appear together, you have to leave out the space between words.

Purple Hand Pledge

Seems like each month has 5 things that are "celebrated" during that time period and I can not keep up. Red Ribbon Week and Bullying Prevention are two things that I feel need a significant amount of time in the Elementary School, and both are October topics, so I focused on Drug Prevention for October and just began my Stop Bullying Now! lessons and school wide Purple Hand Pledge.

For the primary grades, we read the book, "Hands are Not for Hitting" by Martine Agassi and really focused on appropriate uses for our hands. Then each students raises their hand, repeats the Purple Hand Pledge (I will not use my hands or my words for hurting myself or others), and then their favorite part, dip their hand in purple paint and put their mark on their class paper. When the project is finished, the entire wall will be covered with the classroom posters.

 The intermediate grades also get to say the pledge and make their mark, but we focus more on what the pledge means in regards to ourselves. I think as we get older, we tend to beat ourselves up when we are not as successful as we would like or compared with others. So, I pose the question, "What does it mean to be a bully to yourself?," allow the students time to journal, and then share and discuss.

The picture is the bulletin board, which is just black butcher paper and drawn on with chalk. I used to love making, changing, creating exciting bulletin boards in my classroom, so I am thankful to be in an elementary school where I still get to do some of this :)