After telling the story in circle time we talked about who is our neighbor. Who is sitting next to you? Are they your neighbor? Do you know who lives next door to you? Are they your neighbor? I let each child share about who they know, see, say hi to and play with around their neighborhood. As all young children, my kids love to share. This was a lot of fun, as they all had stories to tell. We then talked about how important it is to know where we live and that each of us has an address. When we know our addresses we will always be safe and be able to tell someone if we need help to find our home.
My aid and I helped each child, using the foam numbers, to put their address on a square piece of construction paper, using the color of their choice. We then used a large triangle for the roof, small squares and rectangles for the door and windows. We gave them markers if they wanted to do more decoration. On a large sheet of butcher roll the children each glued their houses to make a neighborhood. We gave them foam shapes of children, flowers, dogs, cats, cars and airplanes to finish off the group activity. We continued to talk about how God wanted us to love your neighbor as yourself. This means to be kind to not only those who live in our neighborhood, but also your neighbor friends in our classroom and at church.
We hung our group mural on the wall about a couple of feet above the floor. This became a real conversation piece during free choice for them to tell stories about their houses and who lives with them.We continued to reinforce our address numbers and street until everyone was able to say where they lived. When it was time to take the mural down we cut the section that each child had contributed to and sent it home.
Not only did we all learn a lot about each other, but we were able to memorize our Bible verse …Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Matthew 22:39
Have a blessed week.
Lynn
