Grouptime events

The recipe 2 cups of caring Mix it with love sprinkle with colour "I want to show my mum my rainbow friendship playdough" Mix it with fun In this grouptime the children made a list of the qualities they feel are important in a friend. We came up of qualities which were reflected from the ideas we gathered on "what are friends for".  They feel that cheerfulness, helpfulness, kindness, generosity (sharing) are important in friendships. Using pictures we then looked at the non-examples. I asked them how it makes them feel if a friend doesn't share, if they're always grumpy, and unkind.  Some of their comments were: "It's not fun" (Orin); "I don't like it" (Tai); "That's not a good friend" (Luka). Together we made a friendship playdough using all the qualities as the main ingredients.  They enjoyed  creating their "friend" and shared this experience with the other children.

My friends make me feel silly when we play shark attack assessment sheet Francine makes me sad when she leaves. I feel sad when my friends help me; I don't need their help. Assessment is our way of finding out what the children learned/remembered or if they have any other comments or questions about our past activities. This is an individual assessment where the children were asked to complete each statement by telling me how they felt about specific situations. The two main ideas are: friends HELPING each other, and saying "HELLO". As we talked about different types of feelings Orin suggested that friends are not allowed to be angry and sad. I asked why he thinks so but he wasn't sure. So I asked the other children what they think and Lysander said that sometimes he gets angry. Using our feelings board on the science table they each shared a time when a friend made them feel sad, angry, afraid or silly. This is to show that friendly relat...

How does it feel when you're making new friends? How does it feel when you're missing an old friend? In this grouptime activity the children explored the different types of feelings we may encounter in friendships. Recalling "Olga the Hobbit" in our formative week, the children's first reaction when asked how to help her find a friend was to say "hello". The children showed understanding that simple greetings and acknowledgement can make someone feel welcome and comfortable as well as initiate friendships.  We then practiced greeting one another, carefully looking at our facial expressions and politely waited for a turn to reply.  The waiting part was a bit of a challenge for them so I explained that greetings require listening taking turns to respond.  With a help of a practicum student I modeled the proper and polite way of greeting a friend and the children tried it on their own.  We made Happy Face Masks to remind us of how magical a simple smile ca...

Our focus is to understand the word "function" as one of the concepts of our unit.  First, I showed them everyday materials like markeres, spoons, bowls, sun hat, scissors, etc and they each described what people use them for? We turned this into a guessing game which made it more fun and interesting. Then I asked them to think about their friends and share what they think friends are for; what friends do for us? What do we do for our friends?  They said friends are for: hugging, spending time with like sleepovers and dinners, and to play with. Late that afternoon Luka proudly said: "I have a new friend,Tai!" Orin & Pauline working on number place cards Francine & Alexis exclaimed: "We did it together!!"  Brainstorming ideas We read the story "That's what friends are for" by Heide & Van Cleif which is about friends HELPING each other. We added "helping" to our list of the function of friends and...

Hi, I'm Olga the Hobbit. Can you be my friend? Olga is looking for a friend. Can you help her? How?  Welcome new families and friends! We began our new Unit of Inquiry on Friendship. The children will inquire into: the role friendships play in our lives the giving and receiving of friendship the expectations in friendships The following are teacher's questions to support the children's thinking Does friendship matter? What does friendship feel like? Are there rules of friendship? In our formative week the children were asked who their friends are and were asked to describe what fun things they like to do with them. They talked about how it feels like to have a friend and some felt that friends should never be angry with one another and that saying "no" will hurt a friend's feelings . Seems like the children are describing more than just the role of friendship but more of what is expected among friends. Are there rules in fri...