Youngest Students Welcome Very Special Guests
Grandparents and Special Friends Day on Friday, May 12 was a great success! The presence of so many devoted grandparents and special friends in the Meetinghouse, halls and classrooms created an exciting and memorable afternoon for students, faculty and staff. Take a moment to view the video of the concert. Photos from the concert and classroom visits can be downloaded for sharing and printing. (Please note, photos from the classroom visits are only accessible via the link shared with recipients. For privacy, the gallery url is unlisted and unsearchable by Google.)
The Post Office Delivers Lots of Feelings
The Lower School theme for the year, Beyond Mad, Sad and Glad, was evident at this year’s Grade 1 Post Office in Jennifer and Alex’s class. The theme is aimed at equipping students with social and emotional toolboxes they need to thrive. Jennifer explains, “When we are able to name our emotions, we can communicate how we feel. Feelings are complicated, and an expanded emotional vocabulary helps children express their feelings which are often not just mad, sad or glad.”
The Post Office Project is a longstanding and much-loved imaginative interdisciplinary curriculum where students operate a post office inside their classroom. They sell stamps and stationary and deliver mail throughout the School. The program is designed to strengthen reading, writing, and math skills, while building confidence and a sense of civic responsibility.
All letters sent through ‘Friends Mail’ must have a special stamp created by students. Former Grade 3 teacher, Linda Chu shared her stamp collection from Sierra Leone, where she lived for several years and discussed the design and symbolism of her stamps. In creating their own stamps, students were asked to focus on one feeling and to design a stamp that conveyed that feeling using key words and symbols. Jennifer comments, “When older students visited the Post Office they didn’t always know how to interpret the stamps. This gave our first graders an opportunity to explain and educate, which is so powerful.”
These busy postal workers delivered more than 1,254 letters and raised $114. To help students decide where to donate the proceeds, the Upper School Service Committee presented two organizations for students to consider: CHiPS, which aims to eliminate food insecurity and homelessness and NAMI, which teaches people about mental health. Jennifer comments, “The students chose CHiPS because they all agreed that healthy food is essential to good mental health.”
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