Creative Writing with Greeting Cards

I am so excited about being one of the featured blogs on Welcome Wednesday sponsored by Take It From Me!  Thanks so much to all of you for taking the time to hop over!  I hope you enjoy browsing my blog and find a new idea or two to share with your children, grandchildren, students, or even the random next door neighbor...our kids need all the support they can get these days.

When teaching creative writing or journaling, you will always have a student or two that can never think of something to write about.  Here is a cute idea to help them get past that...

• Cut the picture part off of several greeting cards.  Some of my favorites include animals.  Ya know the one with a bloodhound driving an old truck or the little bitty, white dog that's having a bad hair day???
• Take a page protector and insert 4 card pictures into it.  (front, back, top, bottom)
• Give each child a page protector and let them pick a picture to write about.  

 Some of the pictures you find on cards are just adorable, and I have yet to have a student elementary all the way to high school not find something to write about after looking at the silly cards.  They enjoy this activity so much, and can't wait for me to get new pictures for them to write about.

For younger children or those that are not able to write, you can modify this activity a little and still get some great use out of your old greeting cards.

• Let them pick their favorite card
• Have them tell you a few things about the card.  
• Write down what they say for them
• Let them draw a picture to go with their writing.  They can either draw the exact picture or maybe what they think will happen next or what happened right before the picture was taken.  

 

 Enjoy!

A Different Kind of Teachable Moment

As a special education teacher, I guess I was under the false impression that my child would grow up automatically accepting other children with disabilities or differences.  Sadly, I was very mistaken.  I wanted to take this opportunity to encourage everyone to take time with your child discussing differences that other children might have.  Assure them that they also have many things in common with children with disabilities, one being feelings.  Everyone can feel acceptance and sadness...everyone has feelings.  

My favorite poster to keep up in my classroom...

If you don't typically come into contact with children with disabilities, you might look at some websites with your children such as http://www.specialolympics.org/  or search for children's books about disabilities. 

Remember that before you automatically tell your child to stop staring, that looking, learning, and being curious about differences is not only natural but a good thing.  We just have to teach our children compassion and acceptance.

I'm sure that parents of children with disabilities get tons of questions, but the main one I get as a teacher is, "Does he/she understand what's going on?"  The answer is, "Yes!"  

True story...

A boy with severe disabilities, not able to talk or walk, scoots over to watch another child play.  The typically developing child yells out, "Ooo, I don't want him over here!"  The boy with disabilities lowers his head, scoots away, and doesn't try to interact with another child all day.  Another teacher says to me, "Wow, it's almost like he knew 'Joe' was scared of him.  Do you think it really hurt his feelings?"  I was almost speechless.  Of course, it hurt his feelings!  Everyone has feelings!

I know it won't be easy, but try to make a great Teachable Moment out of this with your children, before any more precious children get hurt.  Let's all try to see with our hearts instead of our eyes!