Dear Green Room Families,

This week, we focused on wellness and our emotions and feelings. We read How Full Is Your Bucket? For Kids by Mary Reckmeyer and Tom Rath, which is about how small interactions with others can affect our relationships, productivity, health and longevity.

It introduced us to the concept that everyone carries an invisible bucket. When our bucket is full, we feel great, but when it is empty, we feel awful. Through the story of a young boy named Felix, the book teaches kids that their words and actions can either fill or empty other people's buckets, and that filling someone else's bucket can fill their own. The class made their own buckets that we plan on filling throughout the rest of our time together.

We also read a book lent to us by Matt Melnick, TCS’s Assistant Head of Academics & Wellness: Kind Karl: A Little Crocodile with Big Feelings by Sharon Salzberg and Jason Gruhl. Salzberg, who is a meditation teacher, connects beautifully to our work with the Four Pillars gratitude, compassion, joy for others, mindfulness, and thoughtful responses to emotions and behavior. To focus on our fourth and final pillar, the Contentment and Balance Pillar, we followed this story by making our own sensory bottles, which helped children visualize the impermanence of emotions. The swirling contents mirrored how feelings come, peak, and settle, with unconditional acceptance of all emotions as normal visitors.

We also threw whimsy in the mix with a fun Pirate Day. We read Pirates Don’t Change Diapers by Melinda Long, about a young child who saves the day, soothing and taking care of a younger sibling. The class then decorated their own pirate treasure chests and filled them with treasure!

Music class was a free choice class, and the children chose egg shakers for a song called “I Know a Chicken” by Laurie Berkner. They decided they would like to play their own instruments, including the cowbell, cabasa, jungle bells, hand drum, triangle, tambourine, percussion symbol, and the guiro.

To wrap up our week, we had our final Friday 15 and our final Share Day! We enjoyed talking about our emotions, feelings, and compassion, meanwhile filling our buckets.

We wish everyone a well. wonderful and whimsical weekend,

Teachers Nancy and Karla