First Week Favorites ... I WILL

"I promise to do what I promised to do."

Not much is more important than being trustworthy. People need to know they can count on you and it's never too early to teach this to kids. In our school, we live by the Lifelong Guidelines, so our kids learn to understand important concepts throughout the year like:

• personal best

• truthfulness

• active listening

• trustworthiness

• no put-downs 

In this activity, the children are paired up with their shoulder partner (Kagan Cooperative Groups). One child is gently blindfolded and led around the classroom. The goal is to protect the blind partner from bumping into anything and carefully lead her back to her seat.

Because we do this activity during the first week of school, a good amount of trust is needed. The children don't really know each other very well yet, so faith definitely has to be earned and exercised. It's easy to find other trust exercises on the internet... try to plan fun, age-appropriate ones about once a week, or every other week. They're great team and community builders!

Happy teaching!