Living Values in Kindergarten 2005-2006
Susan Wilson
After the LV workshop in August I decided to use the curriculum in my Kindergarten class, to coincide with our school wide themes for the month. I also have included LV vocabulary on my Word Wall, and still hope to teach my students how to use a classroom created, Landscape of Emotion, and plan to have a sticker chart to reward kids for using “Values” behavior that we have studied. I am keeping student LV artwork to bind into individual books at the end of the year, as a keepsake for the students.
Our school LV committee decided to teach the values in the curriculums’ recommended order. It made it easy to incorporate the lessons into my classroom. They fit nicely with the start of the year when we are establishing rules and norms for the classroom.
In Peace Lesson 1, we began by brainstorming what peace means to us. I did an informal chart of all responses and it is posted in our room. The kids had no problem giving their own examples of peace. Some examples were, “no hitting, no pushing, no cussing, no yelling.” I tried to turn their comments into a positive nature, but they didn’t catch on to that, so I recorded their ideas accurately. We then went through Imagining a Peaceful World, as found in the curriculum. The students then drew a picture of the peaceful world they imagined. I taught them “I Am a Peaceful Star”, and since I didn’t have the music to follow, I made up a simple tune for it.
The story in Lesson 2, “The Star Story” did not seem to impact the kids very much. I think that is because it was early in the school year and as Kindergartners, they had trouble focusing on it for very long. I planned to call ourselves “Peace Stars” anyway, so kept moving forward with that idea. At this time I started a chart to write the Peace Reflection Points. I have been adding them to the chart, over time and reviewing them often. I still point to them over time as a reflection on appropriate behavior in class.
The visualization in Lesson 3 has proven to be very effective in my class. I initially read it at random times, but started reading it daily just before our ten minute rest time after lunch. At one point I stopped reading it for a few days and several students missed it and asked me to read it again. Now I use it daily, sometimes alternating it with the “Respect Star Exercise” found in Lesson 3 of the Respect unit. As I read it I see my students physically relax different parts of their bodies in progression with the exercise. I refer to it often as a way to bring peace to ourselves at any given time or place. Sometimes when my group is acting too wild, I stop and we all “breathe” into being peace stars.
In Kindergarten students draw self portraits monthly to show development over time, with fine motor control and details in the drawing. By year’s end I expect the portraits to include the basic story elements: character, setting, and action. The kids also write their names on the pictures and it is an excellent portfolio example of their growth. This year I posted them with the title, “Our class of Peace Stars”, and included a photo of each child and a peace star each one made.
We made Peace Puppets, using Popsicle sticks and gluing on faces the kids drew and cut out of construction paper. They each made four puppets and took two home to play with. I posted words describing what peace puppets are, but put them away for future use. I still plan to use the puppets at school for modeling and acting out the conflict resolution lessons in the rest of the Peace unit, but time was moving on and I had to change the order of activities.
We Painted Peace, as suggested in Lesson 4, but we used brushes instead of finger paints. These were easier for me to manage. At the same time, I had each child make six handprints on separate paper to use later for a bulletin board in the main hallway of our school. I posted the peace paintings on our wall to add color to the classroom for Curriculum Night, when the parents come to school.
On September 21st, it was International Peace Day, so I copied stars with the words, “Peace to You” in the middle. The students cut out many stars, a great activity for young learners to build fine motor strength, and then we went around the school on a Peace Walk. We gave out our peace stars to family, friends, and staff. It was a bit distracting for some classrooms but I did give each teacher a memo explaining what we would be doing. We were well received and only spent a couple of minutes in each class. The students went in and gave the stars to their siblings, cousins and the teachers, and then we were out. We also went to visit the office, nurse, and specialists’ rooms that were appropriate. The kids loved it, but were definitely keyed up. I spread it out over most of the day, doing short visits each time. It would have been too difficult to maintain control of the class if we had done it all at once.
When we were done I modeled writing a class story together using their ideas about the day. Then I quickly typed and copied the story for them to take home and share with their families. I even submitted it to our monthly PTA newsletter and it was on the first page of the next issue.
At this time I jumped ahead and taught the students the song in Respect lesson 3, “These Little Hands”. We were preparing to sing this for the next PTA meeting and for the first MMM in October. Our class was in charge of the months’ theme for October. To teach the words to my class I included rebus drawings on the chart to help them remember which verse we were singing. Kids learn music so easily though, I may not have had to do the rebus. The kids did well with their performances and really enjoyed being on stage. Of course they were nervous and sang too softly, but I was pleased with their stage presence as beginning students.
We also made the hallway bulletin board for Respect, using their handprints and colored paper cut out to the hand size. I glued the varied hands over the letters for Respect and stapled those on top of a red background. It is very colorful and effective. It took several hours to put together and I did most of that at home in a quiet setting. I plan to put that up in our classroom when our month is over in the hall.
For the final MMM in October, the class has learned the song “Listen” by
Red Grammer. It is found on his CD “Teaching Peace”. They love this song and ask to sing and listen to it every day. The performance is this morning and I will be curious to see if they are more comfortable on stage than they were at the beginning of this month.
From this point on, I plan to return to the Peace Unit and teach the lessons on conflict resolution. The curriculum is taking longer than I expected, but I see great value in it for early behavior modification, so I will pace it as needed with my own group.