Who knew you could plant a garden in Red Deer in the middle of January? Well, Mrs. Grainger's grade one class did just that today, but it's a different kind of garden. The first graders planted a kindness garden.
The idea to plant a kindness garden evolved after the kids were talking about 'No Name Calling Week' at Glendale School. We are joining thousands of others around the world to shed light on the issue of name calling by recognizing January 21-25 as No Name Calling Week. Mrs. Grainger's class was trying to think of a way to teach others kind words they could use instead of name calling. As they talked about what they wanted to do, they came up with the idea that everyone likes flower gardens, so why not create a garden that would teach others about kind words? They thought that people would see their garden and want to "stop to smell the flowers," and then they would see that the flowers weren't regular flowers. They would be good word flowers that not only looked and smelled nice, but sounded nice too!
So there it was... a brilliant idea to create a garden of 'good word flowers.' Today the garden caught my eye as I was walking down the hallway, so I stopped to take a look. When it's -25 below 0 outside, an indoor flower garden is a pretty nice place to be. When I got closer I saw a kind word for every student in the class, and each was growing along with the flower it was written on. I opened the door to ask the kids about their garden, and one girl said, "we made the flowers all different sizes so small and tall people could read the words." I thanked the kids for planting their garden, and then went to check out the tweets they had written earlier in the day about what they like to be called. Here's how that went...
