Love and Friendship

Acts of Kindness…Share a Heartprint!

Our goal for the rest of the month of February is to see, as a group, how many acts of kindness we can complete- how many “heartprints” we can hang in our art gallery.

Each child has been given an envelope filled with paper hearts or “heartprints” to take home. When parents see their child being kind at home or out and about, they are encouraged to write what they did on a “heartprint” and have them bring it to Rainbow Connection the next time they come. We will hang the “heartprints” up around our “art gallery” so that we can see the progress we are making.

To help the kiddos at Rainbow Connection understand how they can promote kindness, we will begin by reading a book titled, Heartprints by P.K. Halliman. Throughout the book, there are many different acts of kindness illustrated by the characters in the book and surrounding each act of kindness are lots of heartprints…

We will talk about being kind to each other and to also look for kindness being shared by others here or at home. As I see the children being kind to one another here, I will print their act of kindness on a heart and put it on our wall… As they see someone being kind, they will be encouraged to give them a heart to hang on the wall.

Always a favorite...With hearts galore and lots of stickers, we had fun working with our friends, making some beautiful valentines. 










"What makes a good friend?" was the topic of the week. We talked about how to be a good friend- making friends feel better when they're sad or mad, making friends feel welcome and meeting new friends.

We role played making new friends...

Nice to meet you!

The Robobots by Matt Novak, helped us to talk about differences and how we can have friends who aren't just like us. Everybody is different and that's okay!

Our sensory bin was filled with hearts of all colors and kinds. We had fun sorting them and collecting them in cups and bowls.

Speaking of "hearts", we did exercises to keep our hearts healthy. We did jumping jacks, toe touches and windmills. Then we cooled down with some deep breathing and neck rolls.

When we were finished, we took turns using a stethoscope to listen to our healthy hearts

We always enjoy marble painting- dipping marbles in paint and then rolling the marble around in cake pan for some awesome designs. It was especially fun in a heart shaped pan. The results, as always were amazing. So much fun!

A great friendship game is "Ring Around the Rosy" because we hold hands with our friends.

We added new verses like:

Tiptoe around the rosy...

Kick around the rosy...

Jump around the rosy...

Backwards around the rosy...

Stomp around the rosy...

We tried "crawl around the rosy" and it got pretty crazy!

"Friend to Friend was another great friendship game. 

Head to head... 

Knee to knee...

Back to back...

Elbow to elbow...

Nose to nose...

Follow your heart- we followed a circular trail of hearts. Each heart had a movement printed on it or a song to sing to the next heart- "flutter like a butterfly", "sing ABC's", "swim like a fish", "sing Twinkle, Twinkle", "walk like a duck", "sing Skidamarink", "hop on one foot", "jump like a rabbit", "hop like a frog", "Run!". 

Party time... we frosted and decorated cookies and then we  delivered Valentines to our friends...

Lots of pictures of friendship were captured this week...