- Recognizing the good
- Believe it! See it! Celebrate it!
Public Service Announcement:
We believe that as we embrace an attitude of looking for and celebrating what’s right with the world we can be happier and more productive.
Thought for the Month:
- “Celebrating what’s right with the world enables us to recognize the options and opportunities before us, while helping us to unleash our energy and creativity.” - Dewitt Jones
- “Celebrating what’s right with the world allows us to harness the energy to fix what is wrong with the world – or at least our corner of it." - Dewitt Jones
- “When we recognize the good, we’re implicitly acknowledging that solutions exist for many of the challenges facing us.” - Dewitt Jones
- “If you celebrate what people do well, it’s like giving them oxygen and they perform way beyond your expectations.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
Suggested Whole School Events/Activities:
Celebrate Move for Health Day on May 10th. Make a banner and invite parents to participate in walk through the community.
Classroom Activities:
- Make a Celebration Banner and have students draw what they have to celebrate on it.
- Make a Celebrate journal and circulate it through the class with individuals making entries.
- Participate in Random Acts of Kindness. (Document found in Supplementary Resources or online at www.randomactsofkindness.org).
- Math warm-up: value your words with positive words adding to and negative words subtracting from total value.
- Have students write a short story on what new place or activity they would like to discover over the summer.
- Volunteer opportunities for children/youth.
- Have students create a positive thought basket which can remain in the classroom so that if a student is having a particularly bad day or if caught doing something positive then they can pick a positive thought. Students in primary grades may just use one word while older students may use phrases or sentences to make up the positive thoughts which go into the basket. They can go on coloured paper to add to the celebration theme.
Suggested Reading:
- Oma’s Quilt (E)** - Paulette Bourgeois
- Suki’s Kimono (E)** - Chieri Uegaki
- Jeremiah Learns To Read (E)*** - Jo Ellen Bogart
*Available in the Provincial Library System
http://vision.gnb.ca/welcome.html**Available at Benjamin Books
Resources:
For a special collection of health care resources available through the NB Public Library System you may go to http://www.mindcare.ca/MindCareBibliography5thedition.pdf
Supplementary Resources (found in the green hanging file folder):
- Teachers Guide from the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation (see attached)
- Mental Health Fitness Tips
- Celebrate What’s Right with the World DVD by Dewitt Jones & Leader’s Guide (elementary schools may borrow a copy by contacting Sandi McQuinn sandi.mcquinn@gnb.ca or 848-6684).
- List of Other Recommended Literature
- Information on 40 Developmental Assets
Web Sites:
