When my first grade team first heard the news that we would be having an all school SEL day, we were overwhelmed with excitement for the possibilities of what we could plan for our students! We put our heads together, along with an AMAZING resource from the district and came up with the most memorable day for our Firsties! We did team building, class building, gratitude reflections, journaling, a virtual calming room, and had some wonderful discussions! We were so busy building our community we didn’t snag enough pictures, BUT here are some highlights from the day!
Gratitude Chain-After listening to the book Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed, we reflected and thought about kindness and all of the good deeds we have done for others, and others have done for us. We reflected and brainstormed on things we were grateful for in our classroom, homes and neighborhoods! We made a chain that is hung up in our classrooms to remind us of our gratitude.
Rock Paper Scissors Tournament-
A kind spin on the class game. Once you find a friend you play a round of rock paper scissors. The person who wins goes on to find another friend, but here is the catch. The person who lost the round turns around and begins to cheer for the victor! As the student goes on to face another classmate, they have a peer behind them cheering them on. Once that pair meets up with another classmate, they play a round. You guessed it, the person who loses joins in the cheer squad and the cheer squad increases. Pretty soon, we are down to 2 players with the entire class cheering on these two players. The excitement was through the roof and we ended up playing this games several times throughout the day because they couldn’t get enough!
The grand finale-5th and 6th grade led activity-
The first graders love making connections with the big kids at our school. The 5th and 6th graders worked together to plan a whole school activity. They brought in precut heart shapes with our classmates names on them. Once you received a heart, your job was to think about something that you like about this person and write it on the heart. We were challenged to go beyond “I like your shirt,” or “I like your shoes.” Instead, we thought about what we liked about the classmate’s character. Our first graders went right to work complimenting their classmates kindness, helpfulness and humor! We can’t wait to see these hearts put together across the grade levels into a GIANT complement and kindness rainbow!
What a perfect way to close out SEL day. We seriously can’t WAIT for the next one!
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