Global Kind Project Weeks 2 and 3: Gratitude and Empathy

Over the last two weeks, we've continued on our journey to kindness by exploring gratitude and empathy both in our classroom and in classrooms across the country!

Our first act of gratitude was making Valentines for Veterans, which will be delivered to military men and women via the Pease Greeters! We wished them a Happy Valentine's Day, and thanked them for serving our country and keeping us safe. 

Later that week, we had a Mystery Skype with a class in Michigan! After we guessed which state they were from, we played some games to get to know each other and we all made a pact to smile at three people before leaving for the school day. 

During our skype, we brainstormed a list of people who work for our schools who don't always get the appreciation they deserve, and we made thank you cards for our custodians, cafeteria workers, office staff, nurses, and our bus drivers! We also got together with the Elephant Class for some safari time and read the book Sam's Pet Temper before going through some of Teaching Tolerance's empathy resources. 

We continued with our "Kindness Hot Seat" as well, and we are hoping to get everyone in the hot seat by the end of next week!

Next week we will continue to focus on Empathy with a "mix it up" day at lunch and some more great books!

Global Kind Project Week 1: Kindness in Words

Our first official week of The Global Kind Project has been a huge success! Although we were only in school for a few days this week, we made the most of them and learned a lot about kindness in words, and then we put that learning into practice! 

One activity that we started and will continue over the next few weeks was our "Kindness Hot Seat". Each giraffe gets a turn sitting in the swivel chair while their classmates (and teacher!) write about what they love most about them on the board. After everyone is finished, that person gets to turn around and see all the kind things we had to say about them! 

While talking about being kind with our words, we also talked about the power of our words. While words can sometimes have the power to hurt others, they can also have the power to bring love and positive changes into the world. We learned about how Martin Luther King Jr. used his words along with many others to change America for the better as he fought for equality. Dr. King was peaceful in his approach for changing the world, and we talked about the power of joining voices together.

On Tuesday, we walked around the room with a partner and took turns putting colorful dots on pieces of white paper. 

Afterwards, we used the paper to trace and cut out a silhouette of a dove (a symbol of peace) and wrote words that represented peace and kindness on a black piece of paper. Then we read the story What Does It Mean to Be Kind? by Rana DiOrio and we wrote about what we think it means to be kind under our doves, which are now on display in our hallway. 

 While our original google hangout was canceled due to a surprise snow day, we were FINALLY able to connect with our second grade postcard pals in Illinois!

We got to ask and answer lots of different questions about our schools, communities, and our sports team preferences :) Afterwards, we read the story Friendshape by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and then it was time to say goodbye. We will continue to write back and forth with our buddies via our digital postcards on Google Slides, and we will hopefully get to do another Google Hangout soon! 

We are excited to continue with The Global Kind Project as we move into Inspiring Good with Gratitude next week. For now, we will leave you with this quote one of the giraffes shared with us this week:

You've Got Mail!

This week, the giraffes began to get ready to participate in The Global Kind Project. #GKP18 is a program that was started by last school year by Ms. Riley and a few other educators around the world along with The Educator Collaborative. The project invites classrooms preK-12 to connect with one another and reflect on our individual and collective roles in building a more empathetic, positive and inclusive society. Last year, over 20,000 students and teachers participated in the project, and we are excited to launch this year's Global Kind Project on 1/16! 

This week, we put our letter-writing skills to practice as we created digital postcards to send to our Global Kind Project partner class in the suburbs of Chicago! We told them a little bit about ourselves and we also listed our favorite way to be kind to others. For the front of our postcards, we found images that represented our school or where we live. We will spend the next few weeks connecting with these friends as we explore different aspects of kindness through books, projects, and social action. 

We got to read the postcards from our Illinois friends on Friday, and we will get to meet them via video chat next week as we begin exploring kindness in words :)