Well it has been a VERY busy couple of days and I have not had a chance to post but I would like to wish everyone a safe, restful and WONDERFUL break! Happy New Year and I'll see you on January 8th! 

 The third day of our five days of kindness!

Today we had a kindness concert for our caretakers and office staff.

First we did a dress rehearsal.

Here is our audience. They were so impressed they were speechless...

Then it was time for the big show!

We sang:

Mr. Sun

The Kindness Song

Aiken Drum

They loved it!

Everyone said how we made their day!

How did we feel after?

"Excited!"

"Happy! I remembered that being kind to someone else makes me feel happy too!"

 For our second day of kindness, we created cards to brighten people's day.

We took our time, and did our best colouring.

Inside we added messages like;

"You are kind."

"I love you."

"Kindness rules!"

Then, we were kindness ninjas! We were sneaky and secretly left our cards for staff to find at a later time.

Later in the staff room I heard teachers saying;

"Oh how cute! Someone left a card for me. So nice!"

I forgot to post a picture of our completed Kindness Quilt.

It is in the hall outside our classroom.

I'm so happy with how it turned out!

Inspired by the book "The 12 Days of Kindness " we started our 5 Days of Kindness. We are spreading kindness through our school.

Last week we made posters with messages of inspiration and kindness. 

For our first day of kindness we hung some of these posters around to brighten up the school.

 Fun Friday!

On the last day of our school-wide food drive we had our "Great Can Race"

We had many generous donations of cans so we chose five to compete. We voted on which one we thought would win and talked about why.

We set up...

and off they went!

The winner rolled all the way to my desk!

After the can extravaganza, we each took one item of food and brought it to the table where the school is collecting. 

Kindness in action...

As we put our food down to share with others, we each left it with a kind thought for those who will receive the food. Here are some of those kind thoughts (I'm so proud...)

"I hope you enjoy this food."

"I hope this food helps you feel good."

"I love you."

Next week we will expand our kindness outside the classroom and into the school. Here are our ideas for The Five Days of Kindness next week. 

Each day next week we will be "kindness ninjas" and spread kindness around the school.

Our kindness jar is filling up!

I think we will fill it and get a kindness party next week!!!

 Today for /r/ week we read Ravi's Roar

Ravi has a tough day and he gets angry about it. So angry he turns into a tiger and roars at everyone! He soon discovers that people don't want to play with an angry roaring tiger.

We talked about how feeling angry is perfectly normal. What are things we can do to help ourselves settle down when we are angry?

"Take some breaths."

"Walk away."

"Go get a drink."

"Take a break."

We talked about how these techniques won't solve the problem that made us angry - but it will put us us in a better place to try and solve the problem in a positive way.

Our kindness jar is filling!

We saw more acts of kindness today;

- sharing and playing with a new friend!

- a big help cleaning up!

- helping a friend take their boots off when they were struggling

-helping a classmate find a missing hat

and so many more!

 Busy day today with the winter concert!

But I did say I would post a picture of our kindness jar each day, so here it is!

You can see how single acts of kindness can add up!

Today we saw:

- people helping others

- kindness to the earth - making sure the water tap off

- sharing

- keeping our classroom clean

 We are starting to put all of our learning about kindness into action!

This is our kindness jar. As we notice acts of kindness happening we add a pompom to the jar. This picture was taken at the start of the day. Each day this week I will post a picture of the jar and hopefully you will see our collective kindness growing!

Yesterday we read The Kindness Quilt and coming out of this book we are making our own Kindness Quilt.

Here is the start of our quilt.

We will be building it all week. It is on display out in the hall for all of our school to see.

I'll post another picture when it is done!

 Fun Friday!

In honour of "Ll" week, we played the Limbo!

Each time it was our turn we had to say a word that had an "lllll" sound in it.

For our Math talk we measured the height of this chair using blocks.

 

Does any of this look familiar? We are accumulating quite a mini-lost and found. If  something is yours, please jet me an email and I'll put it in your child's backpack. Otherwise, it will all go to our school lost and found. 

Ms. Babcock did a great lesson on scales and mass.

We looked at two animal figurines an elephant and a ladybug and we estimated which one we thought was heavier. We voted on which one we thought was heavier.

Then we used the scale to test our theory.

"The elephant is heavier."

How do you know?

"Because that side of the scale is lower."

We read Kindness Rules!

We discovered it is a rhyming book. We have been working on rhyming.

Can you hear the rhyming words on this page?

 We started the day with some role play in preparation for the next couple of weeks where we will be putting our learning about kindness into action! We learned about how to diffuse negative feelings like anger and frustration with kindness. As visual reminders, we had our "Peace Wands".

The red wand reminds the holder to speak from the heart - tell the truth - not only tell your side of the story, but also about how you are feeling.

The yellow wand reminds the holder to be a star listener and really listen attentively to the person speaking from the heart.

Then we exchange wands and switch roles speaking and listening.

When we listen and speak with kindness we can solve problems in everyone's favour!

To further our discussion yesterday about the magic of kindness and paying it forward, we read A World of Kindness.

Small acts of kindness all add up into a world of kindness!

In math we have been learning about different aspects of measurement.

Together, we measured these different sizes of paper.

First we measured the smaller paper - 6 paper clips long.

With this knowledge, we estimated how long we thought the larger paper was.

Estimates - 16, 10, 5, 12

Then we measured to test our estimates. The larger paper is 9 paper clips long

The learning about kindness continues! 

Yesterday we read Finding Kindness.

Kindness can be hidden in the smallest of actions.

Where can you find kindness?

Action for Happiness has given us a beautiful calendar of kind actions we can add into our daily lives. Can you help to spread kindness at home?

Our sound of the week is /L/

We are working on self-help winter dressing. For Tuneful Tuesday I taught the class this song to help us all remember the order of getting dressed. Perhaps you can practice at home!

Today we read "The ABC's of Kindness"

After reading this book, one of our classmates exclaimed:

"Kindness is like magic!"

Yes it is! So we talked about the 'pay it forward effect'

One person's kindness can turn into a whole bunch of kindness spread far and wide! Magic!

 Today we talked about how when we are quiet on the outside and on the inside we are able to pay attention and notice things that we might miss when we are otherwise distracted.

We quieted our classroom and our minds and then we listened to this soundscape:

We were able to really listen and notice so many things!

Then we quieted our minds again and looked at this picture:

We were able to really focus and see so many details that we might not have otherwise noticed.

For Fun Friday we played Emotions Bingo!

And of course - its Friday so - Elephant and Piggy!

In honour of /f/ week we read My New Friend is So Fun!

 Today we read The Kindest Red

Faizah's teacher challenges them to think of a world they want. A candy world? An ice cream world? a sunny world? so many choices!

Faizah imagines a kind world - how amazing!

Then she works to make her Kind World a reality through beautiful acts of kindness. In the end, her kindness is returned.

Some really good thinking in Math today.

Our patterns could be different - depending on the attribute we are looking at.

This pattern is an AB pattern if we are looking at size, but it is an AABB pattern if we are looking at colour.

 What a magical morning we had!

AHPS welcomed magicians Brett and Sarah.

They treated us to an AMAZING magic show!

They taught us the rules of magic:

1. Anything is possible

2. Believe in yourself

3. You're not alone

They also encouraged us to "Find Our Magic"

Everyone has magic inside them and it comes out in different ways.

What is your magic?

Kindness? Laughter? Drawing?

It could be anything at all!

Brett and Sarah have generously shared with us some ways you can learn magic tricks at home. We may try some at school too! Just click here to Find Your Magic

This afternoon we read Be Kind

We are often told to "Be Kind" but what exactly does that mean? This book teaches us it can mean so many things! Being kind is giving to others, but not necessarily giving 'things'. It could be giving your time to help, giving a compliment, or giving gratitude.

Being kind is doing things that makes others feel good.

The bonus is - we also feel good when we are kind.