Monday, February 13, 2012

Be a Good Citizen (Serving Others)

We started out this activity with Sister Thomas and myself talking about one of our favorite people in history that we felt were good citizens. I talked about Abraham Lincoln and how he was one of my favorite poeple I learned about growing up. At first I did it like a trivia... I gave them clues until they guessed who the person was. My clues for Abraham Lincoln were:

-Reared in a poor family
-mostly self-educated-
-country lawyer
-the 16th President of the United States (this clue gave him away)
-assassinated
-He led his country through the American Civil War
-ended slavery
-failed in two attempts to be elected to the United States Senate.

Then sister Thomas talked about one of her favorite people in history... Martin Luther King. This was the perfect time to talk about him being february.

After we talked about Lincoln and MLK we talked about how part of being a good citizen is learning more about each other and respecting each other for our unique talents and differences. One girl said this and I liked it "there are two kinds of people... those we like and those we don't know yet". The Sunday before the activity we gave the girls a reminder slip with instructions to bring something that represents them in a brown paper bag to keep it a secret. When the girls got to my house we put the items in another room... then one at a time I got an item and brought it into the room with all the girls and they all guessed whose item it was. Once they guessed correctly, each girl got about a minute to explain to everyone else why they brought what they did and a little more about themselves. Examples of things the girls brought : basketball, hunger games book (girl who likes to read), measuring cups (girl who likes to cook), soccer ball, and so on. It was really fun and I think the girls really liked sharing something about themself with everyone.