Well-Wishes for the Holidays

All warpped-up with positive social-emotional wishes

Originally uploaded by teachergal

This year my classroom has had an “It’s not easy being green” theme. (And yes, I felt a bit old in September when the kids informed me they weren’t familiar with that Kermit the Frog Song!) The reason is that I went back to using a color card system this year, where green means your behavior is great.

Though my kids don’t know it yet, I’m in the midst of phasing out the color card system since it’s not very Responsive Classroom-ish. (I’ve only used the color card system for a couple of classes.) Hence, in a way to promote the phase-out of the system, I had 18 frogs crocheted for them by Krys2576’s Etsy Shop for this purpose. Then, last night, I hand-cut 18 cards, 18 mini-envelopes, and 18 coordinating envelope seals in which I wrote each child a message that said something along the lines of one of these three things:

I’m planning on giving these frogs to the kids on December 23rd as a positive send-off into their winter recess. When they come back, something else (tiny green fabric Kleenex holders — very practical for cold and flu season!) will be waiting for them, which will then lead to a discussion about how we can phase out the color card system (hopefully they’ll want to too!) since it doesn’t seem like a necessity now that nearly every student is consistently following the classroom rules they created each and every day.

Finally, these little notes and frogs tie-in with the “Kind Words for My Classmates” Project I wrote about earlier this week. They’re going to get the boxes filled with kind words, along with these froggies and notes from me, on the 23rd, which is the last day of school before the break.