Thursday, February 26, 2015

Pebbles of Kindness

During interactive read aloud time I’ve been reading the class a series of books on how a little bit of help to either a person or a group of people can make a huge difference. The books we read focused on help in developing countries in the form of animals (goats, chickens, etc...), seeds and gardening techniques, the necessity of fresh water, and health care (such as mosquito nets to prevent malaria). I call that little bit of help being a pebble of kindness, and compare it to dropping a pebble in the water and watching how the ripples spread out far and wide. The children have a good understanding of what this means. They have talked quite a bit about how people in the places we read about live very different lives than they do, and I think it helped them realize (at least to some degree) how fortunate they all really are. As a culminating activity to this series of books, the children voted how to spend a bit of my money so that they can be a pebble of kindness and help others. They each did this through a persuasive letter to me, where they had to state both their opinion and the reasons for their opinion. The winning option was that we would spend money to help provide three sets of insecticide-treated bed nets. This means that our class will help protect three entire families from malaria for up to four years!  I’m really proud of how seriously the children approached their task, and their desire to truly be a pebble and help others less fortunate!

I was so impressed with what the children had to say that I asked each of them to pick out their best reason for their choice, and I recorded them reading it. You can listen to that recording below. Please take a few minutes to listen to their thoughts, and then leave them a comment.


No comments:

Post a Comment