What a wonderful new school year we are having! We love to start a new year with lots of fun group activities that promote cooperation and kindness while getting to know our new group of friends.
These Kindness Books by Scholastic are a great way to begin learning how to cultivate kindness:
We made our own Kindness Books with positive messages like "we can help someone"...
..."we can take turns"
... "we can clean up our toys"
... and "we can play together".
| KINDNESS JAR We started a kindness jar! Everytime a child notices another child being kind we put a pompom in the jar. When the jar is filled up we are going to celebrate with a Kindness Party! |  |
The kindness activities led to a conversation about School Rules - the kids brainstormed all the possible rules we could have in school.
We simplified our rules to 3 simple ones everyone can understand.
1. Be Kind - we support being kind with reminders of "use gentle hands", "we respect our toys by taking good care of them", "we treat our friends how we want to be treated".
2. Be Safe - we support being safe with reminders of "walking feet inside", "we clean up our toys so we can walk well", "chairs are for sitting on, not for standing on".
3. Gentle Voices - using a gentle voice inside helps everybody feel calm and safe.
1. Be Kind - we support being kind with reminders of "use gentle hands", "we respect our toys by taking good care of them", "we treat our friends how we want to be treated".
2. Be Safe - we support being safe with reminders of "walking feet inside", "we clean up our toys so we can walk well", "chairs are for sitting on, not for standing on".
3. Gentle Voices - using a gentle voice inside helps everybody feel calm and safe.
And then we made beautiful posters together to put our rules up on the wall!
| We read 'The Golden Rule' and were inspired to make another poster together! The Golden Rule can be traed back to Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek, and Ancient Indian traditions. |  |
While we painted we talked about how we like to be treated - everyone agreed with 'NICE'!
We loved reading these beautiful books on how to make friends!
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These Friendship Bracelets are so much fun! With each color we put on our bracelet we would ask a new question to get to know our friends better:
Yellow - What's your favorite movie?
Blue - What is your house like?
Green - What do you like to eat?
Pink - What are some of your favorite things to do for fun?
Then if we felt like it we would give our bracelet to another friend in our group!
Yellow - What's your favorite movie?
Blue - What is your house like?
Green - What do you like to eat?
Pink - What are some of your favorite things to do for fun?
Then if we felt like it we would give our bracelet to another friend in our group!
We made Friendship Cuffs to give to eachother out of recycled tp tubes with stickers, glitter glue, and dot markers.
The kids worked hard strengthening their finger muscles to get the glitter glue out of the tube...
... and were so proud once they got it!!
Friendship Fruit Salad
We didn't get many pics from this activity - but the kids loved taking turns to prepare the different fruits and then combine them to enjoy together!
Community Collage
Painting Together
These guys were inspired to paint rainbow stripes together!
The kids did a wonderful job cleaning their brushes between colors.
We loved this Montessori-inspired Color Sorting activity!
Planting and snacking in the garden :)
Building Blocks Together!
These guys built a seesaw together!
We got into groups and engineered some very interesting structures!
Fun times at the water table!
We love our new microscope and cool bugs at the Nature Table!
See you next time!
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