Japanese Children's Day

May 5th, which is the fifth day of the fifth month, is Children's Day in Japan.  This special holiday is for respecting children's personalities and celebrating their happiness.  Isn't that beautiful?!  I wish we had such a holiday here!

This year and last year too, we were lucky enough to have Japanese mothers in our class that were willing to come in and talk about this special day and do a project with the children.

The project this year was folding a warriors hat with newspaper.  Although it required a lot of help, the children really loved the outcome!  Here are pictured directions:

Even baby Bobcat (our classroom is called The Bobcats this year) has his own Japanese warrior hat!  

Lucky Bobcat!

Ben's Bells

Ben's Bells is an amazing local nonprofit here is Tucson.  

"The mission of Ben's Bells is to inspire, educate, and motivate people to realize the impact of intentional kindness, and to empower individuals to act according to that awareness, thereby strengthening ourselves, our relationships and our communities."  

It's truly a heartwarming group, that has worked with schools to promote kindness at such an influential time in a child's life.  

They promote many inspirational projects within schools, but some are called "Kindness Trees".  Here are our mini Kindness Trees we made for Father's Day.  You can't see it, but behind each Kindness Coin (the little flowers that say "be kind") is a dictated quote about what there father does that is kind.  

Please check out Ben's Bells website to learn more about them and how you can inspire your school to become a Kind School.

https://bensbells.org