First Grade: Preparing Ourselves for the High Holidays - Words and Actions Matter!
Preparing Ourselves for the High Holidays:
One Word and Action at a Time!
I recently read this:
Words matter. They are packages of power that can harm or help...
And so my work with the First Grade Students began with reading our first two TREASURES of the year - Gershon's Monster and Mr. Peabody's Apples.
Many of the social justice TREASURES read and discussed this year will be anchored in a particular Jewish text, mitzvah or Jewish value. I introduced the Ecclesiastes text below to lay the groundwork for reading and delving deep into the big messages of these two stories:
Gershon's Monster retold by Eric Kimmel Smith
What happens when a young man named Gershon sweeps his mistakes into his cellar every week, empties his mistakes in the sea every Rosh Hashanah and never says sorry or thinks twice about his words or actions? His mistakes catch up with him in a serious way!!!
Ask your child to share what were some of Gershon's mistakes? (students pulled out his mistakes from a large garbage bag)
And what happened with Gershon and his wife that FINALLY got him to pay attention to what he was saying and doing and become
a better person?
Ask your child to share what were some of Gershon's mistakes? (students pulled out his mistakes from a large garbage bag)
And what happened with Gershon and his wife that FINALLY got him to pay attention to what he was saying and doing and become
a better person?
Mr. Peabody's Apples by Madonna
What happens when a young boy, Tommy Tittlebottom, THINKS/BELIEVES he saw Mr. Peabody, teacher and baseball coach, take an apple from Mr. Funkadeli's Fruit Market without paying for it? He tells his friends about it - who in turn tell their parents - who then tell their neighbors - who in turn tell their friends.
What happens when a young boy, Tommy Tittlebottom, THINKS/BELIEVES he saw Mr. Peabody, teacher and baseball coach, take an apple from Mr. Funkadeli's Fruit Market without paying for it? He tells his friends about it - who in turn tell their parents - who then tell their neighbors - who in turn tell their friends.
Ask your child to tell you WHAT REALLY HAPPENED at Mr. Funkadeli's Fruit Market.
And find out how Mr. Peabody was able to help Tommy understand the power of his words.
Each first grade class brainstormed a list of words connected to kindness that have a lot of power.
Then students wrote their words from the list artistically and creatively on white paper pieces.
These words were then arranged and glued by students on black foam board
as a collection of words from the first grade!
List of kindness words from each class...
Their finished Masterpiece of Words...
One first grade student commented - after hearing that this Word Board would be hung in the first/second grade hallway - "we can all stop by and look at the words and think about which words we would like to use that day..."
