kindness children

My project was titled "Find, Be, and Stay Yourself." The main idea of my project was helping kids find and uncover their creative side, and hopefully make a lasting memory that they could keep for the rest of their lives. I miss experiencing the creative liberties that authors take in creating children's books; scientific articles and such don't hold a candle to what I read in elementary school. My project included pairing fifth graders, the top dogs of elementary school, with kindergartners, the new blood. As fifth graders are on the cusp of maturing, I thought it'd be nice to pair them with much younger children as a sort of reminder of where they came from, and for the kindergartners, working together with a fifth grader is an opportunity to get a glimpse of what life is like five years later, and an opportunity to make an older friend. Despite whatever road that each child might take, I wanted to encourage kids to nurture their creative side by creating a story in which familiar stories were rewritten in whatever fashion they could think of. My inspiration came from The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka. For this writing activity, the theme was "familiar stories, novel ideas." For the art activity, I wanted them to illustrate important parts of their story; in the end, the goal is to create an entirely new picture book, written and illustrated by a fifth grader and kindergartner. For the extra activity, I chose to do a mock interview between the two students, acting as characters from their stories, as an effort to further bring their creations to life. I miss elementary school education. Looking back on it, I miss how fun and wacky our lessons were, and I wish I appreciated it more when I was able to. In the end, I hope that my project can be used to help kids remember the magic of childhood, and maintain the creativity that gets harder to express as they grow older and busier.