Planting Seeds of Kindness with Grade 1

Kindness, teamwork, and respect help make the world a better place. First-grade students in Beth Messina 1996 and Rebecca Godinez’s classes shared this message in their recent live performance in the Taylor Arts Performing Center.

 

On an early sunny morning, parents of the students and their sixth-grade buddies were welcomed into the theater by Director of Lower School Lorri Carroll as this was the first in-person performance with an audience this academic year for the first graders. She thanked parents for spending their morning under the pines before turning the program over to theater teacher and director of the performance, Lisa Daly.

 

“The students have been learning about how a little bit of kindness can go a long way,” said Ms. Daly. “The importance of finding ways to contribute and thinking about the needs of others makes the world better, and the students are finding ways of making kindness grow at Hamden Hall.”

 

The performance opened with a pre-recorded video of the students sharing the ways they have been kind including how they helped their mothers with laundry, shared toys with classmates, and have been kind to each other. After the video, the students performed a song. Donned in handmade shirts designed by student Gabriel Schimelman, groups of two students at a time sang the lyrics, which described actions and the ways to be a good friend to one another and kind to everyone. Following the performance, the first-grade students and their parents walked over to the cafeteria for refreshments.

 

The performance was part of a larger class initiative, which honored Earth Day and the spring season. In class, students worked on cross-curricular projects that centered on nature, animals, and treating others with kindness. For example, in science class with Lower School teacher Claire Rich, the students crafted animal-themed vehicles out of recycled materials. For art class, the students worked with Lower School art teacher Sue Bennet 1973 to create animal-themed art drawings and flower drawings with the theme seeds of kindness written on the top.

 

Mrs. Bennett commented that the students were really creative and are becoming ambassadors for showing how to be kind to everyone they encounter.

 

Earlier in the academic year, students helped harvest seeds from sunflower heads. The seeds were stored and later planted in the ground as a gift to their teachers. The students learned how to plant their own seeds and how to take care of them circling back to the theme of treating everything with kindness.