Wrinkled Hearts + Freebie!

My little ones and I have been having a blast together! We are loving and learning like crazy. I always start the first few weeks with a TON of bonding activities to help students get to know each other and form loving relationships. The classroom climate is THE most important thing to focus on (in my opinion) to have a successful year together! Teaching my kiddos to have empathy and treat one another with kindness and respect is first thing!

When I saw this perfect idea on Cara's wonderful blog "The First Grade Parade", I knew I had to make it my own and do it with my tiny tots.

We began by reading the story Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes.

I explained that we were going to read a story that shows how very important it is to treat one another with love and kindness. I held up a large heart cut-out and explained that each of us has a heart and our heart's hold all of the good feelings and love that we have. We were pretending that the heart was Chrysanthemum's heart. As we read the story, the kid's passed it around and every time someone said something hurtful to Chrysanthemum, we crumbled her heart a little more. This showed how our hearts are feeling when we get our feelings hurt.

At the end of the story, the other characters say much nicer things to Chrysanthemum. The littles tried to smoother her heart back out now that she was getting some love back, but the damage was done and they quickly noticed that her heart did not look perfect.

They realized that it is quite hard to fix a wrinkled heart, no matter how hard they tried!

The moral of the activity was that the words they say to each other can leave hearts feeling sad long after we say them. We worked to heal her heart by bandaging it up! We glued the cute poem in the center as a reminder to choose our words carefully.

I also made little bracelets for them to wear! I used strips of black construction paper as the bands :)

 We hung up the heart in our room as a reminder!

You can download the heart poem and bracelets for FREE by clicking below!

Hope you are having a relaxing weekend :)

XO

A Rainbow of Friends! + Freebie!

Let's face it - kid's like anything that includes food. They just do. And who could blame them?? I came up with this idea late one night before school the next day and was SO excited to do it with the kids. It was a great way to celebrate our brand new friends and create something they could bring home and share the experience with their families.

We started by reading the story "A Rainbow of Friends" by P.K. Hallinan and discussing the importance of friendship!

I started our follow-up activity by giving each friend 4 marshmallows, 4 little sticks (wooden skewers chopped in half), and a plate of Fruit Loops!

Before adding each color of fruit loop, we discussed what each color represents in our classroom!

Red = Love

Orange = Honesty

Yellow = Happiness

Green = Sharing

Blue = Hard Work

Purple = Imagination

Marshmallows = Kindness

Here's how they looked when they were finished! Aren't they cute?!

I printed a fun description on full sheet labels. I had two labels per page. I stuck them on the front of their bags and they were able to take their rainbows home with them!

You can grab these labels for FREE by clicking the link below!!

This made a fantastic bonding activity!! What fun things do you do with your little ones to unite them?

Hope you're having a great week and HAPPY FRIDAY! Hugs to you!

XO