February in the Classroom

February was a lovely month in our classroom. It was full of heart shaped chocolates, kind children and growth.

Every month I try to pick a theme or a single word that we highlight in our Bible lessons and discussions. February’s word, as you would have guessed, was love – God’s Love. The specific theme that we focused on was Loving God and Others. To be reminded of this everyday, I created a themed bulletin board and I thought of a few activities to make everything more exciting and hands on.

The first activity that I thought of was a Bible-verse inspired scavenger hunt game. Every morning, I would hide a heart with a verse describing God’s love on it and a candy attached to it.The students would come in every morning with big smiles on their faces and go hunting for the hidden heart. For morning prayer, I had the person who found the heart read the verse from it and we would reflect on what God’s love looks like in our lives. Here are some examples: God’s love is patient, God’s love is kind, God’s love is steadfast, God’s love is faithful and so on. They loved this activity and thought of a new one for March. Easter eggs with Bible verses. I’m not sure if I’ll do that, but I have some pretty awesome activities planned for March that I will share at the end of this month.

I remember as a teenager participating in the drive through challenge where you pay for the person behind you. I was absolutely touched by this and tried to incorporate random acts of kindness in my everyday life. I wanted to encourage and spur my students into serving one another. I’ve seen too many unkind actions and heard too many mean words in the classroom lately, so I decided to give it a try.

I set up a board with a challenge called “Random Acts of Kindness (RAOK) ” and drew a thermometer to track our acts. The challenge was to get 200 RAOK by the end of the month. I printed out a list of ideas for them and had them brainstorm the different ways they can serve each other in the classroom. Every time they completed a RAOK, they posted it to the challenge board with a sticky note. Let me tell you, I had those sticky notes on every cabinet. All 200 of them. We made it to our goal and I’m proud of them all.

Moreover, this month in science we started a new unit about the earth. To make learning more hands on, we made a paper maché globe. I love to watch them fall in love with the world. I enjoy teaching them about the different countries and continents because I myself love traveling and learning about the beautiful world out there. They always look forward to a new week when we get to pray about a new country, the Gospel and the missionaries in that country. I start out by showing them a map of the country, a few videos about the land and the people in it and then we pray. My heart is forever touched by all their faithful prayers for all the unreached peoples of the world.

I am falling in love with teaching these passionate, active, and dedicated students who yearn to learn and discover. God has done beautiful things in our classroom, changed hearts and He has knit us into a family.

Goodbye February, Hello March 🙂

Love,

Katie aka Mrs. Gen

 Highlights from this month