Kindness Snowman

Some of you may be doing Elf on the Shelf -- And more power to you on that! A teammate did it last year, and her class really enjoyed it. 

I personally wasn't that excited about all that went with Elf on the Shelf -- so after happening upon a couple blogs, I decided to do a Kindness Snowman. Well, I started with the Kindness Elf, but College Girl said she thought Kindness Snowman would be better. 

He's the cute little guy. So every day last week, I wrote a little note and taped it under his arm. Then they all tried to find him as soon as they came into the room. And somebody read the note -- and we tried to do what it said. 

We've done things like say Hi to someone; write a nice note to a teacher, compliment someone; pick up trash, etc.  So Thursday, they wrote me a note telling 3 reasons each one was proud of themselves. 

And Friday, this was the note from the Kindness Snowman:

"Shhh...It's a secret. Don't say a anything til the end of the day. Kindness Snowman"

My class got really quiet after my person read the note. Finally, one of my quiet little sweeties asked, "Does this mean we can't say anything until the end of the day?" I was almost busting out laughing, because, yes, that is what it says. But of course, the Kindness Snowman just meant please don't keep asking about the secret surprise. 

And at the end of the day, the Kindness Snowman sent home a packet of hot chocolate, after asking Mrs. Sanders to write a quick note back to each student about what they were proud of. 

Music

Our series has this wonderful story:

It is a story about a girl who can't find anyone who likes music as much as she does, but she keeps looking and looking. Of course, it has a happy ending! I think it's a good story for reminding kids to be their own selves, to persevere in finding people who like the things they like, and it's ok to be different. 

At the last minute on Thursday, I decided yes, we'd do it. So I told the kids we'd make instruments on Friday. I let them bring things, and a few did, but it was mostly me. I had a ton of toilet paper rolls from some other craft I hadn't actually done and I had a couple big peanut butter jars {empty, of course!}. When I got to school, I realized I didn't have anything to do the shaking - like dried beans or rice. So I found some old water bottle caps that I didn't use for whatever project I had been saving them for, and some buttons for - yes, another project I didn't do. Found some rubber bands, too. Got out my box of scrap pieces. And here's some of what we did:

And then they all played their instruments - it was definitely a beautiful noise!