Wrinkled Heart Lesson

Last week was a great week!  It was wonderful to spend time with parents of EVERY SINGLE student in class celebrating the progress made in the past few weeks of first grade!   Thank you for taking your time to come in for parent teacher conferences. One of the best indicators of a child's success in school is a parent's interest and support in what they are learning.  If there are questions or concerns that were not addressed this week, please feel free to email, call or set up another time to meet. 

Another reason it was a great week was because of an excellent lesson on Tuesday! Miss Nykamp and I have noticed that one of our classroom rules has been broken on a consistent basis.  This rule was the Golden Rule: Treat others the way that you would like to be treated. When a child is emotionally hurting, very little learning is likely to occur.  So valuable time was spent on a very important lesson: The Wrinkled Heart!

Miss Nykamp began her lesson asking the children to feel their hearts.  She discussed the fact that everyone has a heart and we have feelings in our hearts.  Miss Nykamp then cut out a large, beautiful heart from construction paper and held it up stating that everyone starts out with a 'heart' as pretty as the one she held up.

Miss Nykamp then spoke to the children about how words and actions can either make others feel good or hurt their hearts.  She described examples of times when others have made her heart feel great and times when her heart had been hurt by words or actions.

Miss Nykamp then invited students to give examples (without using names) of times when their feelings were hurt.  As you can see, there were many children with stories to share!  Each time an example was given, Miss Nykamp would ask how it made their heart feel, and the answer was often the same - "Not good!"  As examples were given, she also put a fold in the large heart for each one.

The children began to notice what was happening to the perfect heart very quickly!  "Oh no, look what happened to our heart!" and "Why are you crumpling up the heart?" and "Our heart does not look nice anymore" were just a few examples of things the children stated.  Miss Nykamp held up the crumpled up ball that used to be our heart.  She told the children that each time something cruel is said or done to another person, it puts a wrinkle in their heart.  

Miss Nykamp then asked the children to give examples of times when someone said or did something kind to the children!  For each example given, she would unfold a piece of the heart.

When the heart was opened up again, she asked the children what they thought about the heart.  They were happy the heart was not a crumpled up ball anymore, but noticed that it still had a LOT of wrinkles in it.  Miss Nykamp stated that hurtful words and actions put wrinkles in hearts, so the children  should always remember to be careful about what they say and do to others.  "Wrinkles" put in the hearts of others may be made a little better with apologies, but never truly disappear once they are there.

Miss Nykamp then showed the children a poem to help them remember the lesson.

Miss Nykamp then told the children that our wrinkled heart would be attached to the poem and displayed in our classroom for them to remember this very important lesson learned.

She then held up a miniature heart and poem and told the children that they would all be given a small heart and poem to take home.  She invited them to tell their families about the Wrinkled Heart lesson at home this weekend.  

If your child did not remember to tell you about this lesson, please ask!  We asked the children to respond to others who say or do cruel things to them with, "Ouch! That really hurt and it put a wrinkle in my heart!"  It is our hope that the children in OUR classroom will think very carefully about their words and actions BEFORE saying or doing them!  Hopefully the lesson learned this week will carry over onto the playground, on the bus and at home as well!