In the first few weeks of preschool I am trying hard to build a sense of community in our classroom. I want each child to feel loved, wanted, and know they belong. I want the kids to know each other, and know their names. At this age it is very common for them to spend lots of time with another child, even play with another child repeatedly, and never know that child's name or anything about them. This has proven to be true - this group of 6 kids are all in my ward. They are all the same age, they have been in nursery together, and now sunbeams together, and several have had play dates and been to birthday parties - but for the most part none of them knew each others names, and if they did they rarely used them.
To solve this problem I decided to have the kids make friendship bracelets. We read a book about friendship, then I put out containers of different color cut straws. Each child got to pick a color of straws, then they had to ask each other if they could have a straw from each others container... make sense? So if Megan had the pink and Jackson had the blue, Megan had to say, "Jackson can I have a blue bead?" and Jackson would have to say, "yes" and give her one. This turned out great. They all used names and were so happy to share their beads - it really did build a great sense of community.
At last minute I decided I wanted to add beads to their bracelet that had the first letter of each of their names - so it would be a true class bracelet. But in the end it added more complexity to the process and the kids didn't seem to care about the initials - so next year I will just keep it to the straws.
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