Today was our second half day of school where we focused on kindness and learning how to get along together in the Kindergarten All-Stars classroom. We started by reading The Recess Queen and we talked about how Mean Jean wasn’t showing kindness, and Katie Sue showed kindness by asking Jean to play even though Jean was being a bully. Then we made a simple thinking map illustrating ideas on what we think kindness means. Finally we took what we learned about kindness and did our first time at free choice centers. Students practiced sharing, taking turns, and positively resolving conflict.
We also learned each others names by sitting in a circle and singing the song “Who Stole the Cookies From the Cookie Jar” while students passed around behind their back a toy cookie. We tried to guess who had the cookie by saying each classmates name by singing the song. Then we created self portraits while I showed students how to add more details in our self portraits. For example I encouraged students to draw hair, eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.