Friendship Group.

This year in my classroom we are really focusing on friendship and what it means to be a friend.  
Our AEA gal Val, has been coming in to help us with this.


We started off reading How to Lose All Your Friends by Nancy Carlson and talking about all of the ways the character lost their friends.  We then created a list of things to do to KEEP our friends. 

The list my kiddos came up with were great!

1. Be polite, use your manners.

2. Smile LOTS!

3. Be a good sport.

4. Be helpful.

5. Be honest and tell the truth.

6. Share with others.

Each day we talk about the ways to keep friends and how we can do that during each day.  After our holiday break we started bucket fillers.

     We read the book:  

And made our buckets (using the bucket template from Mrs.Walkers Frog-tastic website.  We also use the bucket filler notes from this website also.  

After reading the book we created our buckets and put them in a pocket chart.  The kiddos were then told that they could fill out bucket notes for members of our class.  They could only write 1 to each student.  We waited all week, from Thursday to Thursday.  Students put their finished notes into a bucket for me to "proof".

 After our friendship group meeting about ways to fill and dip buckets, we got into a circle and got to read our bucket notes.  Here are a few pictures of my kiddos reading their notes:  
We are DEFINITELY planning on continuing to do this EVERY week.  The looks on their faces as they read their notes.  Some of them never knew that they filled the buckets of their peers.  Their "love tanks" were filled by their classmates.  It was truly awesome to see.