Holiday countdown

As many of you know, the character word for the month of December is Kindness.  I feel like I've been talking a lot about what this word means to our Dragons.  I've been talking with our 3rd graders about "put downs" and "push ups".  I've been reading a story about a fictional girl named Maria and all the put downs she encountered one day.  Each time she was put down by another, we folded a big red heart.  After reading the story with all the put downs, we re-read the story.  We omitted the put downs and the students came up with push ups instead.   For each push up, we also unfolded the heart.  In the end, we had a wrinkled heart.  The lesson was to impress on the children the power of their words.  Even when we apologize for an unkind word, it leaves a wrinkle in our heart.  So, think before you speak.  If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all.   Spread sunshine and happiness by giving compliments and speaking kindly to each other.  It's really not that hard!