In the Classroom: The Leapfrogs
Building friendships
As we begin the school year with new children joining into the Leapfrog classroom, we wanted to get to know each other. Learning more about each Leapfrog supports relationship development between the teachers, as well as peer to peer.
To learn more about each Leapfrog, we went right to the source and conducted interviews with all of the children. We asked the Leapfrogs to tell us three things about themselves that they wanted to share with their classmates.
We learned so many new things about each Leapfrog including their favorite foods, things they enjoy doing, and some of their favorite things to play with. Once all the interviews were done, the Leapfrogs shared their responses at morning meeting, which encouraged them to find shared interests and build relationships with their friends.
As the Leapfrogs found similarities with their classmates we also took the opportunity to talk about differences. With our very culturally-diverse classroom with children of mixed ages, 3-5 years old, we found it very important and relevant to discuss how we may notice differences between ourselves and others.
In the Leapfrogs, our goal is to support our children’s ability to appreciate and celebrate our differences in the classroom. To begin pointing out some of those differences, we read a great book called What’s Special About Me, Mama? by Kristina Evans, in which a child asks his mother what is particularly special about him.
The mother points out his many special characteristics as she goes through the list of special things. This fostered our conversation on how our differences make us special and unique.
We asked the Leapfrogs what makes them special and they drew their responses. Being that this question can sometimes be difficult to answer, even for adults, we used other questions to help guide their thinking such as, “What is something you like to do?” or “What are your favorite things?”
These responses were priceless:
“I like red velvet cupcakes and chocolate.”
“Going to get ice-cream with my dad”
“My whole body, I like my face too.”
“My mommy gives me kisses, that’s special.”