eARThshaking Art Teacher!

Thursday, February 3, 2011

GLOBAL: Holiday Mail for Heroes

The American Red Cross sponsors a program called Holiday Mail for Heroes. My students were able to make 2,419 cards that we put in the mail to the Red Cross. We worked on them for several weeks. It's amazing how a simple, easy project......making Christmas cards.....can turn into such a learning opportunity for youngsters. As we drew and colored and created the cards we talked about who the cards were for and what they were doing for our country and the world. We talked about how much of our focus during the holidays is on ourselves and what we want, and what is on our list, and what we want to do....and how focusing on others, and what we can do for them, during the holidays is such a wonderful way to spend our time. And, when students would begin to argue over wanting a particular color of crayon that another student had it gave me the perfect opportunity to again turn the focus to those we were making the cards for and what our purpose was. So many lessons were learned while we made those 2,419 cards! And another lesson was learned when Sergeant Gerhardt came to pick them up! What a worthwhile program Holiday Mail for Heroes is! Can't wait to do it again next year!