For Valentine’s Day classroom celebrations this year, our principal asked the staff to focus on friendship. Here in the library, I often have lessons that incorporate social emotional themes, so I decided to take the week prior to, and the week of, Valentine’s Day to share lots of information about what being a friend looks like and sounds like.
Using print books, ebooks, videos, and databases (and a super cute STEAM activity), I created lessons that I believe my readers truly connected with during those two weeks.
The first week, my lesson was entitled, “What is Friendship?” and the big question was, “What does it mean to be a good friend?” In the lesson I used the wonderful PebbleGo article, Making New Friends, and the books My New Friend is So Fun! by Mo Willems and Snail and Worm Again by Tina Kügler. My students and I had insightful discussions about friendship and specific ways in which the characters were good friends to each other. We also had a great time creating snail art!
The second week, my lesson was entitled “Be a Fantastic Friend” and we continued exploring what it means to be a friend. Scholastic Watch & Learn has two wonderful friendship videos: Fantastic Friend Countdown and Can You Be a Good Friend? which gave my young students some concrete examples of things that they could do in the classroom and at recess. The books I incorporated were again by author/illustrators Mo Willems (The Big Guy Took My Ball!) and Tina Kügler (Snail and Worm). I love that my young learners appreciated the humor in each of these books and laughed out loud at the characters’ silliness, while also understanding the message of friendship in each.
The Creative Librarian 