Kindergarten: The Peace Bag and The Domino Effect!

By Anonymous





The Peace Bag...Some THINGS that remind me of peace...
By Stephanie Rotsky


It was such a pleasure to introduce myself to this year's kindergarten students during the first week of school! I see it as a true privilege and a huge responsibility to be one of their teachers who helps lay the foundation for them to explore what it means to be peaceful and recognize and tap into the power that they have to make peace happen in their world. This is serious stuff and hopefully our path of learning and doing will be great fun, engaging and impactful.




We first gathered on the perimeter of the rug. I brought with me my bright pink bag adorned with a jeweled peace sign. I began...

 My name is Stephanie and some students have given me the name Peace Teacher! I LOVE this name because I care so much about feeling peaceful and bringing more peace to our world. And I'll tell you this...YOU have a lot of power to be peaceful and bring more peace to the world...At this point, I noticed a few students with their mouths wide open in utter astonishment that I had just uttered those words - YOU HAVE A LOT OF POWER! I reminded them that they should not wait until they are in, for example, second grade, or middle school or in college to make peace in our world. It can happen now!
I invited every student to reach into my peace bag and pull out an item that I put there that reminds ME of peace. Ask your children what was in my peace bag and how they connect to peace for me. Then I asked students to start to think about what kinds of things remind them of peace.
a tambourine


a bag of crayons


a tzedakah box


a rainbow flag

a get well note from a kindergarten student last year

people smiling at me


a picture of a dove with the word Shalom on it

Next we headed out to the hallway and onto the playground with paper peace signs and tape and made decisions together where would be good places to hang up these peace signs to remind us how to be with one another. Ask your child to take you to the different Peace Sign places on the playground and in the hallway and in their classrooms.







The Domino Effect - Our Words and Actions Have Power!


Our second week of Social Justice together began with a true story...


As I was driving to work last Monday, a little girl on my street - waiting for her bus, started smiling and waving enthusiastically at me as I passed by her. I did the same back to her! Did we know each other? No! Had we ever met? I don't think so! And yet- she couldn't have been more excited to greet me! I smiled all the way on 95 headed to Rashi and I continued to take that sweet and powerful moment with me as I walked into school greeting everyone with the same big smile and hello that this little girl had shared with me. I created a little pictogram to illustrate what happened in that moment.



 Then I introduced and hung a poster with one important idea:
I read it aloud first and then asked students to repeat after me - almost feeling like it could be a mantra! We connected these words back to the story I had just shared with them about the little girl on my street. 






Next, I opened up my box of dominoes. I asked if anyone would share what people do with dominoes. I then wrote these two words: DOMINO EFFECT. I wondered aloud if anyone knew what the domino effect means. One student said it is like when one person trips and falls into another person and that person falls on the person next to them...A great example to allow me to demonstrate the DOMINO EFFECT when we are thinking about the power of our words and actions...

I set up a line of black dominoes with one domino at the head of the line. I pointed to the white domino and said to imagine that the white domino was the little girl who waved and smiled at me. Then I pointed to the first black domino. I said to imagine that the black domino was me - receiving that smile and that wave. Then I pointed to the next several black dominoes and asked everyone to imagine that those dominoes were students and teachers I saw first thing that morning that received my hello and smile. Now let's watch what happens when I touch the white domino...When all of the other black dominoes fell, I announced: That's the DOMINO EFFECT! Because of one little girl who waved to me on Monday morning, I passed on to many other people.





























Students worked in pairs, then, to have some fun and experiment with the dominoes to create their own DOMINO EFFECT. Some pairs get creative and set up a circle or a curvy path of dominoes to see if the DOMINO EFFECT would still work. IT DID!


 We concluded by sharing an AWESOME youtube video (Thank you Mrs. O!) called Rainbow Dominoes where students watched an extraordinary example of what a DOMINO EFFECT could look like. Here is the link to watch with your child. Enjoy!



Looking forward to sharing and experiencing many DOMINO EFFECT moments this year!







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