Our tribes~

I decided to introduce Tribes to my preschoolers~ Since it was Thanksgiving yesterday, I'm beginning with Appreciation. I asked them questions like "If someone helped you tie your shoelaces, what would you say to him?", to remind them that there are lots of times when we have to show our appreciation, to say thank you to others. We did the calendar and counted together, and then reviewed the songs that we sang last week. Then I taught them this song:

Let’s Be Thankful

Let's be thankful for today,
For our friends and our play.
Let's be thankful let's be glad,
For our food and the things we have!
Let's give thanks for you and me,
And our home and family~

Then I read them the book "Thanksgiving Day in Canada" to explain to them what Thanksgiving is and how people celebrate on this occasion. After that, I explained to them that I'm going to divide them into groups of 2 or 3, called Tribes, and they'll be doing activities together from now on. I told them that I'm not going to tell them who's in their group, because they need to find out themselves. I showed them the cards that I prepared -- cat, dog, and cow. We used movements and sounds to pretend to be each of those animals. Then I gave each of them one of the pictures, and asked them to not tell anyone what they had. Then, they had to pretend to be that animal, to find their group members, who are the same animal~ I assigned Daniel to be with Sophie and Giada, but both girls weren't here today, so I pretended to be a cow to let Daniel find me. ^^ They had a lot of fun pretending to be the animals and making noisy sounds~~

I gave each of them a card with their name and their Tribe animal. Tribes is a community buidling process, where students are placed in small groups to work and learn together, to create a safe learning environment. The 4 agreements of Tribes are: 1) Attentive Listening, 2) Right to Participate/Right to Pass, 3) Appreciation (no put downs), 4) Mutual Respect.

I gave them paint and paintbrushes, but it didn't work out because the paint was too dark and thick, it covered all the pictures and names! So I made another photocopy for the students and gave them markers instead. I asked them why our painting didn't work, and discussed with them how I solved the problem~ As they were working, I told them again that this week we're going to focus on the theme of appreciation, and there's a lot of thanks that I had to say to them. For example, I thanked Cooper for colouring a picture for me, thanked Reya for putting on her shoes when I asked her to, and thanked Shriyans for sitting nicely during lesson today. Tomorrow, I'm going to ask them to say an appreciation for at least one person. =)

Phillip's nametag (brown doggie Tribe)

Reya's nametag (cutie kitty Tribe)


Daniel's nametag (mooing cow Tribe)