We Are Kindergarten Champions!

The end of the year is a blur often with all the activities and celebrations.  It was with much anticipation for my class to have our We are Champions! lesson as well as our awards ceremony.

For this lesson, I have a giant play house that the whole class can fit inside.  It was labeled "time machine".  The students sat on the rug and then were invited to enter the time machine.  I have a plastic tube sound maker that made "woosh" sounds while the students were in the time machine.  Students came back to the rug and we revisited the things we had done for a particular month.  I pulled up the community and watched videos or saw pictures that I posted for that month.  The students then entered the time machine again and were brought to another month of the year.  We went through all the topics and events we did this year.  The kids loved it and enjoyed seeing their pictures of themselves over the year.  It was a pleasure to do with them.

We also completed a second service project to help in our community.  Students helped make a second batch of blankets for the Project Linus organization.  It was very enjoyable to sit and visit with them and share stories of Classroom Champions while we tied knots.  I had my daughter help me deliver them to the drop off site.

We had an awards ceremony with our certificates and medals I made for them that said, "I am a champion!"  The students took turns celebrating their friends and posing for a picture with me.  I enjoyed much being proud of their individual accomplishments and reflecting quickly on their goals from the beginning of the year as each student listened.  I am so proud of their accomplishments.  I know that Kerry Simmonds had a huge impact on them as well.  The students often brought up Kerry as a inspiration to something they did or why they did it a certain way.

I love Classroom Champions and the amazing impact it has on my students, and me.  I am thrilled to be asked to return to be a part of this inspirational program.  Thank you.

We Are Champions!

We had such a great final meeting with Meryl and Charlie in May!  The kids were so excited to meet up with them again. The kids had great questions and Charlie and Meryl gave them great advise for finishing off the rest of the year.  We truly appreciate all that we learned this year.

 We has so many great Classroom Champion moments this month.  We partnered up with an elementary school from other district (to promote friendship and community), we did a canned food drive to collect food for children in our community that will not have food during the summer months.  We set a goal of 2000 lbs of food (Goal setting) Our two classrooms ended up collecting 3903 lbs of food for our local children.  The class that we partnered with was a third grade class, so as fifth graders, we were also able to show our leadership skills when we met for the food presentation to the food bank and a picnic lunch.

As May came to a close we reflected on all of our Classroom Champions lessons.   I asked each students to make a poster reflecting on which lesson was their favorite.  It was very interesting to me to see how different lessons affected the students.  I had students pick leadership, goal setting, healthy living, friendship. community, fair play.  I loved reading their reflections! I am so glad that I had the opportunity to teach these important life lessons! 

 We also completed Meryl and Charlie's challenge, to write goals for next year.   Most of the students wrote fantastic goals for themselves.  They have truly learned about goal setting and perseverance in achieving those goals. 

We just have one last thing to add---