A Lesson in Gratitudes | Tales from our 1st Day
Gianna and Gus create artistic gifts for each other.
It’s a small group but sweet at pumpkin pie. 6 girls and 4 boys all making art and exploring the practice of gratitude during this Thanksgiving week camp.
“What are gratitudes,” I ask the group. Blank stares all around. It sounds kinda familiar to most but they can’t quite put their finger on the meaning of that big word.
“It’s like when you have a lot of feelings,” Gabriel, age 7 ventures a guess. And I really wish that was the answer because I love that answer.
“Well, this is the week of Thanksgiving so I guess that it something to do with being thankful.” Madeleine, age 7, nails it.
So, all day we talked about these gratitudes. Here are some of my favorites – Being Active, Carrots, My mom, my dad, my donor, kindergarten, movies, pink, blue, and – my number 1 favorite – Glitter & Razz.
In Move & Groove class, we created partner dances based on our gratitudes. In Magic Messes (art class with a brand new teacher to us this time, Shanel) we created pieces of art for a partner. I loved this activity. Each partner had to talk about what he or she liked while the other partner had to listen. And then, each person had to create a piece as a gift for their partner. They shared it with teh full group before giving it to their partner. At the end of the day, Sabine, age 5, said that she was grateful for being able to make a gift for your partner. I loved hearing that.
In drama class, we began making up our play to be performed tomorrow. We brainstormed as many gratitudes as we could think of and then created a bunch of little stories based on gratitudes that we picked randomly from the list. Then, we put all of our ideas on one big piece of paper and attempted to take the best ideas and make them into one play. We did a pretty good job and we are on our way to creating a play that involves a talking Tootsie Roll who is grateful to have her job at the zoo because, you know, “not very many people want to hire a tootsie roll” (says Sara, age 9). She is so grateful that she will do anything to keep her job and she won’t let the vampire, the zombies, and the shape-shifters get in her way. Intrigued?
More tomorrow…
Thank you for sharing this! It’s hard to get a sense from our kids what they did today, so it’s wonderful to have a glimpse through your eyes.