Leadership

I had the second grade class for Leadership for the past 8 weeks. We will meet again for the last quarter of school. 

A typical class begins with taking a few laps around the gym, then meeting at the colorful rug. We practice stretches by “listening with our eyes”, which means watching only to follow the moves, versus using words to communicate. The class remains focused and quiet as I lead them through a few yoga poses.  Sometimes we take turns leading the circle.  Yes, gnome stretches are incorporated into the flow. 

Then we move to a table in the art room to reflect on gratitudes.  We kept a gratitude jar and also filled out a gratitude sheet where they can express (with words or pictures) what they are thankful for for the week.  

Whrj they feel complete we move unto our topic of the day. Topics included: community, respect, giving, happiness, to name some. Usually an art project would take place after. For example, when we talked about community (what does community mean to you, who makes up your community, is your class a community?) we created rainbows with cardboard and acrylic paint.  To make up the rainbow, you specifically need ROYGBIV to complete a rainbow just like every friend at Orchard school completes our school community! The kids want to add glitter to the rainbows, but we had to let them dry properly. We will use up a bit of art class to complete that project. 

Community Rainbow

We spent a class reading and discussing this wonderful book titled “ The Three Questions” by Jon J. Muth.  

 "When is the best time to do things? Who is the most important one? What is the right thing to do?"

We had a great conversation about the three questions and enjoyed a small art project using chalk pastels and index cards. We picked a page from the book for the kids to create a replica of the beautiful artwork found throughout the book. Using the edge of the index card they would rub chalk pastel away from the index card to create sharp edges when the index card was removed. They almost used it like you would a stencil. They maneuvered the index card to create the mountain peeks and lower valley and used their finger to rub the pastels to enhance the value and depth. Lastly the red kite in the sky was added with colored pencil. Simply beautiful. 

The inspiration! It was an honor sharing this time with the 2nd graders.