Showing love for everyone

We live in a very dense Mormon Community. Each year the majority of my class is from a family that are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This is probably a good thing if you happen to be a Mormon. However, if you happen to not be LDS, I can imagine there are times you might feel a bit on the outs.  I am very aware of this in my classroom. Each year I do have a few children from different faiths, and since I teach a socialistic program, we don't do faith based lessons. However, children love to talk about what they did at church or things they are learning about their faith, and I welcome it! I'm happy to say that in my class I have never witnessed any child being treated differently or left out because of what church they go to. To be honest, I'm pretty sure none of them even think about it. My class is expected to show love and kindness for everyone.

So with this in mind, today we talked about how we are all different and how we are all the same and wats we can show love to each other.  I asked the kids how they thought we were all the same. They had some answers like we have hair, eyes, faces, ect. When I asked how we were different, they kind of sat blank for a while. No one could think of anything. I love this! At this age they see each other as the same. Everyone is equal! Or possibly, they are still in the "universal phase" where they are the center of everything (wink wink).

 I pulled out their feelings books form MGT and read about some of they ways we are the same and some of the ways we are different. I explained that we all feel scared or mad sometimes but that we are all scared or get mad at different things. I think they got it.

Then, to tie in our lesson on body language we talked about sign Language. What it is and why we use it. They kind of loved it. Even though it's hard for their little hands to make the signs, they were excited to try. 

After I taught them the sign for I love you, we made these "I Love You" hands from MGT. This little friend here is such a great kid! He speaks Korean and is learning more and more of the english language here at preschool. It is such a pleasure to have him in my class. All smiles and eager to learn all the time. Even though some instructions get lost in translation, he is so happy and never gets frustrated. He is my first bilingual student and I hope he likes me as much as I like him! I know that other children enjoy having him around too. He is happy to play in any group and is truly friends with everyone!

 One last activity we did today was singing some songs. When we sang the "Say Hello" song, I taught them different ways to say hello. "Say Bonjour" or "Say Hola"… they loved it! We also practiced our sign for I Love You while singing "You're My Friend".

 Today's lesson was so great. I could really feel the love! Even though it was just a day, I'm confident that the ideas and concepts taught here today will cary with us all year.

Happy loving friends,

xoxo
Miss Mandy