Kind Words and Earth Day
17 April 2009
Dear families,
We will be doing an Earth Day Book Swap during your child's Character Education class next Wednesday through Friday, April 22-April 24.
If you bring a book, you can swap it and take home a "new" book! You can bring in just one book or as many books as you wish (is it time do some spring cleaning of those shelves at home?)-- the most you can take home is five books, however, because of the time it takes to look through the boxes for a book.
Or if you don't wish to participate, that's fine too. (Some children mentioned that they love all their books and didn't want to bring any in to swap. If your child changes his mind after seeing the neat books his friends are taking home, he can come during lunch recess another day).
Any books preschool level through 5th grade would be appropriate, so you can bring in a book that you've outgrown and take home a more challenging book.
You can bring your book(s) to the CE house or you may bring it the day of your CE class.
Any remaining books that are not swapped will be donated to a worthy cause.
Mahalo,
Lori Abe and Shirley Rivera
Character Education
Wrapping up the canned food drive: Thank you so much to all the families who donated food and personal hygiene items! The children counted over 1000 items of food that came in. WOW!!!!!!!! We certainly have a very generous and thoughtful MPI family.
Thank you also to Mrs. Johnson and Mr. and Mrs. Serikaku for driving all those cans to St. Patrick's Food Pantry. The volunteers at the Food Pantry were so grateful!
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This week our Chaplain Koyama returned back to Hawaii and doing chapel services, but he was feeling very sad during chapel because his father just passed away.
We decided to write kind words to him, because that is what friends do when their friend is sad-- we try to let them know we care about them and we try to make them feel better if we can. I tried not to prompt them and asked them for examples of what they could write. I was very curious to see what words they would come up with, being so young and never having read any Hallmark condolence cards. I knew whatever they wrote would come from their hearts.
The children wrote words that I know will bless Chaplain Koyama and some drew little pictures that they hoped would help him feel better, such as pictures of Chaplain Koyama and his father togehter, an ice cream cone, and hearts. One child drew a picture of herself with Chaplain Koyama smiling and looking up into the sky together, looking for his father in heaven.
Here are some of their kind words:
* Think about the times you spent together. Think about when you had fun with him.
* Your dad will always be with you forever and ever.
* I know your dad is in heaven and I hope you always have a good day like always.
* I hope you feel better. Your dad is in a happy place now so you don't need to worry.
* Don't be so sad-- we are here to take care of you.
* I love you.
* Your dad will always love you and you are one of the best chapel persons and your dad is the best.
* It is ok-- you can think of your father any time.
* I hope you feel better and your father always will be in your heart.
* I'm sorry that your Dad died. But he'll always remember you.
* Don't worry because your dad will be watching over you.
* I am sad because your dad died.
* I miss your dad. Your dad was a great dad to you.
And I had to smile when I read this one written by a kindergartner: "I love you. I hope you have a God day" (I copied all the capitals and lower case letters exactly as written).
I wish you could have seen their little faces as they sat intently drawing and writing these kind words to Chaplain Koyama.
Please pass me a tissue...
This week we talked about next week's Earth Day Book Swap. We also started talking about how we can care for the earth, starting with reducing the amount of water we waste.
I read a book about how valuable and fun (clean) water is, and then the children brainstormed ideas of how they-- even being young children-- could save water. With the preschoolers, I mentioned some of the ideas the older kids brought up.
Here are some ideas they mentioned:
* Turn off the faucet when you're done using it.
* Turn off the hose when you're done using it.
* If you drink water and aren't done with it, put it in the refrigerator instead of throwing it away.
* Take a shorter shower.
* Don't let the bath water run too high.
* Turn off the faucet when brushing your teeth.
* Throw trash away in the trash can, so it won't fly into the water.
Then each child acted out how he could save water. When acting out how I turn off the water faucet, I pretended to twist it, and many students copied that movement, or acted out brushing their teeth, or taking a short shower. So when one student showed me an up and down movement as to how he would save water, I must have had a perplexed look on my face, because he promptly explained to me that the faucet in his house shuts off by pressing it down. Ah! I had to laugh.
