A few months ago our kindergarten class made a friendship book for David to give as a gift to his cousin Natalie's kindergarten class at American School Foundation in Mexico City when he and his family traveled to Mexico over winter break. FSH kindergarten was excited about David's trip because of all the many wonderful connections we've made to Mexico this year as we've journeyed to Mexico "on the wings of the monarchs."It's not often that a kindergarten classmate has an opportunity to take on the role of an ambassador of friendship from one school to another but that is exactly what David did! David visited Tr. Erin's kindergarten, greeted the kindergartners, and presented our friendship book to the class.
Upon his return to Pennsylvania, David worked on a slideshow about his trip to Mexico City and his visit to ASF. For Treasures Sharing one day, David and his dad showed us the slideshow and digital book about their trip to Mexico.
We found out that David's visit and our class' book of friendship inspired Tr. Erin and her class to make a book for our class. We were so excited to open the package when it finally arrived that we came in early from outdoor play to open it together.
When we opened it last Friday we took a "first look" at the book and read a short note Tr. Erin had enclosed. Yesterday we read the book, looked at the photos of the children, and studied the details of the children's drawings.
Tr. Erin's class wrote about things they like to do and as we read the book aloud page by page, FSH kindergartners got very, very excited. FSH kindergartners discovered that they like to do the same kinds of things the children at ASF do!
As the kindergartners made a connection with each child and his/her page in the book, the miles between ASF and FSH seemed to magically disappear. By the end of the book we decided that if we were to meet and play with one another, we would definitely get along and have a lot of fun.
However, as long as there are thousands of miles between our two classrooms and schools we decided, we will have to figure out other ways of being friends. Teacher Erin and Teacher Ann are already emailing to make plans for ASF and FSH kindergarten classes to chat via Skype from our classrooms next week!
Stay tuned for updates!
