Who We Are....

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Are we generous beings?
 What is generosity? 
 * Sharing with our friends and family.
* Being kind and helping each other. 
* Giving things that we don't need/use anymore .
* Receiving presents. 
* Saying Please and Thank you to show our Appreciation towards other people.

The children in the Wind group received a blank cut out person. Their job was to decorate it in order to share some characteristics about themselves. Sarah and Emilie reminded everyone to be thoughtful when using different colours and materials to decorate themselves, because as they remembered from the colour unit, colour and materials can be used to describe something. The children shared and discussed various aspects that they liked. We talked about different ways of showing generosity and discussed their understanding of what generosity is. 

Emilie and Sofia told us that they love to give hugs and kisses to their parents, which also makes their parents happy. Byron said that it made him happy to share his stuffy with his brother, because he could see that his brother really liked it.
From this conversation, we read the story "The Quiltmaker's Gift" by Jeff Brumbeau. The story is about a Quiltmaker that sews quilts for the poor people. After she finishes a quilt, she walks up and down the street, looking for people that are homeless. The children identified that taking care of other people and giving gifts that will help other people be comfortable and cozy is an act of generosity. In the same story, there is a very greedy king that likes to receive things and doesn't like to give anything away (Trystan: "The King is not kind. He is not generous") He makes various attempts to acquire a quilt, but the Quiltmaker gives quilts only to the poor and needy so she suggested to the King that if he desires a quilt, he should give away possessions that no longer make him happy. The King thought and thought, and finally he decided to give something away; it was a marble. The boy that received the marble was so happy; and so the King started giving more things away because he realized it makes him happy to make others feel joy. The story ends with the quiltmaker giving the King a quilt and for the first time, he was very happy.  
Sarah "Giving things away can make people change and be very happy" 
Trystan "I love marbles, I would be very happy to receive a marble too" 
The children each received a marble and some paint. Some of them decided to paint with it, others to play. We are all working on making a quilt. We will paint and write stories that show different ways through which we are generous.