Hello Brilliant Butterflies Families,
We have been having lots of fun at school this week in wrapping up our special unit study on Australia with Lauren (from Sally’s class). Today we started a new unit on Friendship and Kindness. We started out by having a discussion about ways to be a good friend and to be kind. The children had many wonderful ideas like sharing toys, helping someone who was hurt, or asking someone to play with them at recess if they looked lonely. 🙂 It was a beautiful discussion, and the children seemed very interested in ways that they can help others! We also started a class paper chain including the children’s ideas of ways to be kind on each ring. We will continue to add to this over the next several weeks! We created friendship paintings with rolling marbles through paint with a partner, and had a music parade where everyone worked together to follow the leader!
The children have also enjoyed playing in our new dramatic play center “The Children’s Garden Bakery”, and have been practicing sharing the materials and taking turns. This can be difficult at first, but I love to see how the children can talk through their disagreements and come up with solutions together. We are always nearby to help facilitate a conversation if necessary, but the children have done a wonderful job with this so far. Our writing center has been upgraded to a Post Office, and many of the children have been very busy writing letters and putting mail in each other’s mailboxes. There have been so many wonderful opportunities to practice writing our names, our friends’ names, and simply practicing holding a pencil or pen and making marks on paper.
All of this will lead us up to Valentine’s Day next week. We keep it very low key at the Children’s Garden. We will have each child decorate a large envelope which will be placed above their cubby in the hallway on Tuesday. If you choose to bring Valentines for your child to hand out, we ask that you bring one for each child in your child’s class….. and no candy. We also ask that parents help your child to pass out the valentines to each envelope before school, or you can do it for your child at any time during the day. At the end of the day on Wednesday, you may take your child’s envelope home and open Valentines after leaving school. As a class we will continue focusing on friendship and kindness through projects, games, and songs.
Thank you for sharing your lovely children with us.
