5th Graders at Peter Hobart, Aquila and Park Spanish Immersion  attended Youth Frontiers' Kindness Retreats during the month of December.
(Susan Lindgren 5th Graders will attend in February)

Since 1987 Youth Frontiers, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in Minneapolis, has been delivering programs to build positive school communities that help young people realize the importance of respecting themselves and others. Their vision is to change the way young people treat each other in every hallway, lunch line and classroom of every school in America so that today’s young people make tomorrow’s world better. Last year, Youth Frontiers worked with nearly 100,000 students and educators throughout the country.

On the Kindness Retreat, the Youth Frontiers retreat staff focus on creating a more positive school community by engaging students in a variety of activities that build students’ empathy skills and teach safe ways to help prevent bullying.

For more information on Youth Frontiers and/or the Kindness Retreat click the button below.

Can We Be Friends?

The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
Kindergartners will be working with their counselor this month on the skill of showing kindness by sharing and accepting others even if they are different.  Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister is the perfect book to help with this theme.  

The Meanest Thing To Say 

The Meanest Thing to Say by Bill Cosby
Little Bill, Best of Volume 1 on iTunes 
First Graders continue to work with Counselors this month on Friendship Skills.  Last month students learned how to not judge someone before you get to know them; learning to give others a chance.  This month is focusing on how to handle the trickier situations in a friendship:  when we disagree, argue, and/or hurt each other's feelings.  

Counselors are using Bill Cosby's, The Meanest Thing to Say, story and video to help students understand more about friendship and that our words can really hurt each other.  Sometimes friends tease each other, thinking that it is funny and that it is fun but often someone is not having fun and actually feelings are being hurt.  Does that mean we cannot be friends anymore?  Little Bill, with the help of his Dad, shows students that there are other ways to handle the situation that still allow us to be friends.  

Random Acts of Kindness

Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts
The perfect story for the holiday season!  What do you do when you really want something but maybe you don't quite need it?  What do you do when you meet someone who really needs something but doesn't have a way to get it?  

Counselors will be sharing the book Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts and discussing with students the feelings of wanting something versus needing something.  Students will also be looking at how we can do little things for others to show kindness.  

"I am only one; but still I am one.  I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.  I will not refuse to do the something I can do."  - Helen Keller

Counselors are wrapping up their classroom lessons on the topic, Being an Upstander, this month.  Students and teachers have been participating in many conversations on what it means to be an Upstander and ways that we can practice being one.  

Here are a few ideas:

1.  Choose not to join in when people are picking on or laughing at someone.
2.  Speak out against unkind words or actions.
3.  Say something helpful to the person who's being picked on or laughed at.
4.  Ask people who are teasing how it would feel if they were the ones being teased.
5.  Ask the person who's being left out or picked on to join you in an activity.
6.  Let an adult know what's going on.

What other ideas can you come up with as a family?