A story of a Gratitude Circle - 'c' revisited...

So Katy and I have been struggling with our class for the last little while - they've been a bit over-excited about camp and forgetting their manners.  They're still wonderful children (obviously), but not as wonderful as what they usually are and what we generally expect... (end of term-itis?)

Katy had the great idea of doing 5 positives and 5 negatives at the end of each afternoon... this idea evolved into doing a gratitude circle before going home.  We try to do a different thing every day, or at least rotate through different things; on Friday we gave each child a letter of the alphabet (inspired by moi and my gratitude project) and we were going to use it for our circle at the end of the day.

Friday afternoon wasn't the best.  The gratitude circle didn't happen. 

Ever positive and ever hopeful, we tried it again at the end of today.  We reminded the children of their letters and we let them think about it all afternoon before gathering again. 

It was perfect.

They said such lovely things, such as:

• mum - because I love her baking and she makes me biscuits
• learning - because it's fun
• imagination - because sometimes I daydream (no kidding!)
• books - you don't need any gadgets to enjoy them, you just can
• yellow - since it's the colour of the sun, and the sun gives life
• x-rays - because without them, we wouldn't know if we were sick
• phone - so we can keep in touch with and talk to Grandma in England

and so many more that I found my eyes were a bit blurry with happy tears... and I was filled with gratitude for our class.  

The best ending to a day yet... it must serve as a reminder to me - even if it's not a great afternoon, I must take the time out with my class to be grateful... because I am certainly grateful for them.

We wrote it up this morning - some of the children had revised theirs...

but still so wonderful!