Welcome to the The Aurora’s Gazette You can expect the Gazette twice monthly on Fridays. It will update you as to the goings on in our classroom, and give you full picture of our Brown Room community!

And now, for this week’s Gazette:

The Gift of Love

At the Winter Party, you all received a gift from your Aurora’s. Here is a peek into the gift giving process.

Since the beginning of the year, whenever someone in class is having a home day, the Aurora’s Crew works together to ‘send’ thing they love to their absent classmate. Perhaps you’ve even received an email about what the other children have sent your kiddo.

At the start, children generally choose to send things they personally love to their classmates. This is age appropriate, as children are beginning to build perspective taking skills, and recognizing that the needs and interests of others are different from their own. We asked the children to shift their thinking by asking the simple question…”Does your friend love that or do you love that?” Over time, we have seen the kids begin to take note of what friend’s love, listening to closely to their classmate’s words and ideas.

Through this practice the student’s have built strong compassion and community, listening closely to ensure they can send their peers things they love.

In this week leading up to the Winter Party, we have been thinking about translating this to gifts for other’s, specifically the special grown ups in their lives. We told the kids that the gifts would be a surprise, so they could of course tell their grown up they were giving them a gift, but please wait to tell them just what the gift was. We talked about how surprises can be fun because they are something that bring joy, and are different from secrets.

We then go to work painting our canvases with purple, blue, and white. The children were thrilled to see how different colors created different tints.

Next we asked the kids to think of something they love to do with their grown ups. While we have a feeling that some of these events are perhaps things they would eventually like to do with their grown ups (Hint, Hint, we guess 🙂 we ensured we wrote their words exactly as they spoke them.

Finally we wrapped our presents with paper and tape. The kids were VERY excited about this step, with some saying, “I’ll leave one side open just in case they forget how to open it.”

Finally, they were ready to pass them out at the party!