Lest We Forget

We spent a lot of time this past week talking about peace and Remembrance Day. I wanted to share with you today, on Remembrance Day, some of the wonderful ideas our class came up with.

First, here are some examples of the PEACE acrostic poem that we wrote with our big buddies.

I love the last one where A stands for active helping. Now wouldn't this world become 150% better if every single person became an active helper?!?!

And here are the poppies we made in Community Arts & Crafts...

We did some activities before making these poppies. It was a two day process with all 92 students in our community. 

On day one, we read Todd Parr's book called The Peace Book ( I got smart about reading a book to 92 students at once and photographed all the images so that I could put the book on the smartboard!) and then we brainstormed all the many things that peace can be before doing our own writing. We made the poppies on day two and added our writing to them. I am hoping that they are gracing front doors and refrigerators all through our school neighbourhood!

Here's the book we read. If you haven't read it, you need to. In fact, you can't really go wrong reading any of Todd Parr's books. He is awesome!!! You can check out his website here. And to find out more about the book you can click on the picture of it below...

I am always humbled by the ideas that children can come up with for these types of activities. Sometimes I think that if all the adults in the world would follow the advice of children, we would have a much happier and peaceful world!

Here are some of their thoughts...

Peace is...

• being kind
• having food
• wishing on a sun
• helping people
• having toys
• skating
• having fun with friends
• sleeping
• school
• wonderful
• recycling
• having dreams
• planting trees
• reading to myself
• watching birds fly in the sky
• playing with my dog
• sharing
• hugging
• spreading love
• having a house
• learning
• being me

And I have to share one of the Peace is... pieces in its entirety. This kid gets it big time!!!!

Can you read them all?

It says Peace is...

• giving love to someone you love
• saying something nice to someone
• being free
• having a family
• being a kind person
• being a nice expecter
• having a home
• being a great friend
• taking good care
• giving a present to someone
• a grateful world
• giving cards
• eating food

My favourite one? Being a nice expecter. When I asked her what she meant she said it meant expecting nice things all the time. As in, having a positive attitude, looking at the bright side, having a half full glass etc. I just love how she put it. Be a nice expecter. That's something I can totally get behind!

I hope that you find some inspiration in the words of these young people. Their wisdom far exceeds the amount of credit given to them. 

Wishing you a peaceful and gratitude filled day.

Cheers!

Olwyn 

How to get through a day when you are exhausted...

the answer? choosing time!!!! my class so far is awesome. i have 9 grade 1's and 12 grade 2's. they work and play together so well. i am crossing my fingers that this is not just a honeymoon period and that it will last. i may cross my toes and eyes, too!

at this time of year my main goal is to have students really enjoy being at school and in our classroom. i want them to slowly build stamina to work for longer periods of time. to that end, we are spending our days doing a seatwork type job followed by a short choosing time. i repeated this three times today. the activities were not difficult but they allowed me to go over expectations for scissor and glue use. we also learned how to put pages into our duotangs. we did one of our September poems. it comes from one of the old readers i found in the cupboard years ago! the class had to read the poem and add the pictures to their page.

to get a copy of the poem and the pictures to cut out and glue on click here.

Ms. Hughes