Global Kind Project Celebration!

On Thursday, we joined The Educator Collaborative for a LIVE celebration of the Global Kind Project! 

After getting to see pictures of classrooms all around the world and learning about all that they did to be kind over the last few weeks, we got a special shoutout from The Educator Collaborative founder Chris Lehmann and he shared an important message: 

"There are so many of us, including YOU, who can help to make things better—Lets celebrate all that we can do to to make the world a better place than it was yesterday"

We also got to hear from author Trudy Ludwig, who wrote The Invisible Boy along with many other great stories, and she too shared with us all that we are capable of by just being kind. If you'd like to watch the celebration, click here!

Now all of the giraffes have had a chance to sit in the hot seat! 

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!

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 :)