Blogging About Grandparents and Special Friends day in a kindergarten classroom

Today I am going to blog about a teaching idea that I have found to be so popular that other teachers might want to implement it as well. Since it is Friday, and we could all use a good laugh, I am also going to blog about a five year old's fascination with hair.

Every year in my current school we have Special Friends and Grandparent's Day in the lower school. Prior to that, I would hold my own Grandparents Day in the public schools. First, we would let each child finish a sentence "I love my grandparents because...".  You can alter the phrase depending on the child's home situation. For example, if there was no grandparent, we would let the child write about a special friend. If the child was unable to write it, we would write what they dictated. We used blank paper that was 12 x 18. The child would draw a picture on the top portion and write on the lower section.

We also let the child decorate a big yellow ribbon (writing would not show up as well on blue) that said "Grandparents Day" or "Special Friends Day" with glitter and then cut it out. We invited the Grandparents to join us on this special day.When his or her guest entered the classroom, we would pin it on for them.

 I would get a karaoke machine or portable speaker system and let each child introduce his or her special friend or grandparent at the front of the room.  Either I or the child would read the page they had created , show the audience the picture, and then the child would present it to the guest. At that point, if a grandparent wanted to share something special about themselves, we would encourage them to do so. For example, I remember once that a grandmother brought in a doll that she had been given by her mother that was over one hundred years old. The audience would clap after each introduction and each child would just beam! If a child was unable to have a guest, I would ask someone like the music teacher to come in to be with them. In all of the years that I held this, there were very few occasions where a child did not have someone come in. The children AND the special friends loved it. After the introductions, we would have a simple reception and let the guest look at artwork displayed around the room.

Now, to start the week-end off with some humor, let's talk about kindergarten students and their fascination with hair. For some reason, if you put a pair of scissors in a kindergarten child's hands, chances are one will eventually want to try them out on hair. Bangs are a popular location to see if the scissors really work. No matter how many times we start out the year telling children that we do not use scissors to cut hair, once in awhile it happens.

We were in the midst of center one day this year when a large screech emanated from my assistant. I rushed over to find her standing over one adorable little boy. In front of him was a good sized chunk of bangs. Kindergarten scissors are not known to be very sharp, so how this child managed to cut his hair with them, I will never know. He looked up and smiled. I had to call his poor mother to tell her the bad news. He has one of those dutch boy haircuts so it was obvious that a small rectangular piece of his bangs was missing. If you can picture the top of a  jack-o-lantern's mouth with a tooth missing, you can get an idea of what his bangs looked like for awhile.

Other years I have had children experiment on a classmate. One year a little girl screamed when she saw the boy next to her holding the end of her pigtail in his hand. He told me "My brain told me not to do it but my hand didn't listen." I can only imagine what his Mom had to say to "his hand" when he got home. Everybody knows that teachers have eyes in the back of their heads but no matter how hard I tried, a few times in all my years,somebody got scissor happy.

The moral of this little snippet is that no matter how many times you say it, or how hard you try to keep your eyes on everyone, eventually one year don't be surprised if a child in your classroom gets a little scissor happy!