Four Easy Ways to Encourage an Attitude of Gratitude

 

How do we encourage an attitude of gratitude in our students?

It's that time of year again - the time so many of us stop and say thanks for all the gifts we receive from the universe each day. It's a very reflective season, leading up to a season of giving and often of overindulgence. I often wonder at this time of year what we can offer to our students that will make the reflective and thankful aspects of Thanksgiving last throughout the year. 

How long for an action, a thought, or a practice to become a habit? I've heard varying opinions on this, but most settle at right around three weeks. I tried this out myself recently. I've done it before while going through Covey training, while making plans for my students, or after watching Oprah. This time I did it just for me. I tried to think of and write down three things each day for 21 days that I am grateful for. Sometimes I just really miss Oprah! I think she nudged so many of us to become more reflective. 

At first, it was the usual list that comes to each of our minds immediately: our families. Spouse, parents, children, siblings, grandchildren. Then maybe some special moments with each of them. Then I expected the list making to grow more difficult. The great surprise (to me anyway) was  that it became easier and easier each day to think of three things that make me feel grateful, and in fact harder and harder to stop at just three. 

Grateful for a warm breeze against my cheek here in Michigan in November.

Grateful that I can easily walk into the mall from the farthest parking spot. (This revelation should come in very handy when holiday shopping begins in earnest, and the only spots available are the farthest!)

Grateful for the first rays of sun that wake me up now that I am retired. (Got up in the dark every day for years!)

My personal list continues to grow and grow.

What's on your list? Are you comfortable sharing at least a part of it with your students? 

Introducing an attitude of gratitude to your students and building upon it until it reaches habit status just might make a difference in the atmosphere of your class in general and in the life of each of your students in particular. 

Some easy to implement suggestions:

Declare your gratitude together.

Add a declaration of gratitude to your class meeting time. 

(I'd call it morning meeting time, but most years my class meeting was never in the morning. It's so important, I think, to have that community building time, no matter what  the time slot during your busy teaching day.) Use talking sticks, a rainstick, a special ball, or even a glittered leaf to get the discussion started. As each student receives the talking prop, he/she must state one thing, person, idea, aspect of their life for which they are grateful. (OK to "pass" until some great examples have been set and all have the idea.)

Change up your playlist.

If you don't already use music to inspire your students to be kinder, better, stronger versions of themselves, now is the perfect time to start. If you already use music to enhance your teaching and your collective day, brief pause here for applause and a pat on the back. (At least a silent cheer for you, awesome teacher!) Add some songs to your daily playlist with the theme of gratitude. Two of my favorites available online for free (just click and enjoy!):

Journal it!

If your students already have journals, tab a section of it for thoughts of gratitude. If you would rather, start a new gratitude journal that kids can keep all year to nurture and continue to grow their new habit of declaring gratitude. Write right along with them at least at first. Make yours honest, heartfelt, descriptive, and a beautiful example of the way you'd like theirs to look. Use special paper, markers, pencils, etc. to embellish it. I have a Pinterest board where I save ideas for journaling that inspire me. Feel free to take a peek or to follow!

To encourage an attitude of gratitude this month, and to keep it going throughout the rest of your school year, try Rainbow City Learning's November Super Bundle! If you love this bundle, you will be happy to know that there is one for every month of the school year! Each month has a different theme.

I hope you have found a few ideas here to make this season of reflection more meaningful this year in your classroom. Please know that I am grateful for each and every one of you who reads this blog! 

If I can do anything else to help make your job easier this year, please let me know in the comments below! If I use your idea for a new blog post, you will win a TpT $10 gift card. If I create a new resource for Rainbow City Learning based on your idea, you will win a free copy of that resource to use in your classroom! (Note: all comments are reviewed before appearing on my blog. It may take a few hours for your comment to appear! Thanks for your patience!)

For more November thoughts on teaching, be sure to check out the posts below by the amazing bloggers in Teacher Talk. 

If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials at TeachersPayTeachers.com.  For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

0

Enough at Holiday Time

Our family has a reunion every year at Thanksgiving time. We are scattered all over the country (actually all over the world) now, but each year as many as possible try to meet up for a banquet cooked by professional chefs (yay!) rather than by any of us. We meet in a hotel back where I grew up and spend several days just enjoying each other and loving on our newest generation. It takes me back to my childhood, when most of the meals were home cooked, certainly at Thanksgiving, and when most of my extended family hung out together all the time. We were there for so many of the milestones in each other's lives, sometimes because they were official and came with an invitation, and sometimes because we just happened to all be there. We were all always there, either at my parents' house, or my grandparents' house, known simply as "down the house" (In Pittsburghese, "You gon' dahn the hause?" Or, "See ya later dahn the hause.") We never said yinz in our family, but we sure pronounced words like dahn and hause just that way. It brings a tear. Sigh.

Our Thanksgiving celebrations through the years always included the long table for adults and the kids' table. I believe I sat at the kids' table until I graduated from college and was married with a tiny apartment table of my own. It was a good place to be, and a great place to grow up.

We hosted a brunch at our house recently, and my favorite grandson (aka only grandson) asked if we could move the kids' table to the end of the adult table so that it would be just one long table and we all could sit together. What a brilliant idea! I wish I had thought to ask my grandmother the same question. Her kids' table was seriously all the way in the living room. We always felt that we were missing something over there! Brunch was so much fun that day, and the furniture arrangement just might have had something to do with it!

Thoughts of Thanksgivings past and future also brought me to the thoughts of the season of excess, which seems to start earlier and earlier each year. I thought I had finished all of my holiday shopping yesterday, but thought of several items that I wanted to add today. A tiny voice in my head said, "Enough!" The voice was right. I took some time tonight to think of all the things that I have enough of. I certainly have enough clothes to last forever. Six bags are ready for donation right now. I have a precious family to love, and I know they love me, so enough love. I have probably far more friends than any one person deserves, so enough friendship. Since I've rekindled my love for dancing and exercise, I am mostly blessed with good health. I do request that you stay away from me though if you have not had your flu shot. Learned that the hard way. Enough food? Probably too much, given my never-ending struggles with the scale.

Yes, enough. I am so sure that I have enough that I have no holiday wish list of my own. The days ahead might just be a good time to consider with your students and children or grandchildren, nieces, and nephews - whoever is important in your life - what exactly each of you has enough of. And then, you might want to extend the conversation to ways you can reach out and share with others who might not have enough. Some examples (some that I've talked about in previous blog posts) might be:

• Adopt a family to gather and wrap holiday gifts for.
• Pack winter comfort bags for the homeless.
• Visit an elderly residence and play board games or sing. 
• Plan an act of kindness to do every day (or even once a week) for someone else.
• Share your holiday spirit by learning more about winter holidays celebrated by others in your community and around the world.

An amazing book that I've just discovered is I am Enough by Grace Byers. It is a lovely way to remind our children that each of them is a precious gift to the world.

For resources to make your teaching life a little easier in the days ahead, and to learn about winter holidays celebrated by others, click here! Winter Holidays with Rainbow City Learning
For resources to emphasize Gratitude, click here! Celebrating Gratitude with Rainbow City Learning

In the days ahead, I wish you a seat at the table surrounded by those you love, and the most precious of gifts to open: friendship, caring, and awareness of the needs of others.

For more November thoughts and tips, be sure to check out the posts of my blogging friends.

If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts

that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials at    TeachersPayTeachers.com.  For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

0

What's Saving Your Life Right Now?

What a great idea for the middle of winter! On February 2, we will be at the midway point of winter, and The modern Mrs. Darcy (a favorite blogger of mine!) has a tradition each year of writing down all the books and other things that are saving her life right now. It's easy to make a giant list of all the things that are absolutely killing us in the middle of a long and gray winter, but the idea of turning those thoughts from negative to positive is intoxicating to me right now! 

Here's my list of books that are currently saving my life:

Wintering by Katherine May uses examples from nature, history, and legends to show how retreat and relaxation can really get us through difficult times. Winter can be hard. It is especially hard during these pandemic times. Reading this book let me know that it's very ok to slow down, cuddle up under a soft quilt, and read. Even as a busy teacher, you don't have to be constantly involved in preparation, planning, doing, and assessing. It's ok to take some quiet time for yourself.

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult is a tale born of the isolation that the author experienced during the pandemic, as so many of us have experienced. Without giving too much away, this book has encouraged me to fall asleep more easily at night, looking forward to dreams. Since finishing this one, I do sleep better  even if it takes an extra sweater and two pairs of socks! I also find it interesting to remember my dreams. 

The Stranger in the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom has renewed my spiritual faith. It has also caused me to reread his earlier book, The First Phone Call From Heaven. With so many now missing from my life, the idea of such an occurrence brings me joy and gives me hope that someday we will meet again.

Books for kids that I love to share, and that save my life when I do so:

Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles

This is an old favorite from my personal and class bookshelves. I've always asked for parent permission first because the main character, Comfort Snowberger, lives in her family's funeral home and has attended 247 funerals. I always thought that might be considered too intense or scary for some kids, but I have never had a parent say that their child could not participate.

Even the first line resonates, " I come from a family with a lot of dead people." Don't we all?
Comfort says it so beautifully herself:
"...death is hard. Death is sad. But death is part of life. When someone you know dies, it's your job to keep on living.
So...we did. We adjusted. We did what we always do when death comes calling:
    We gathered together.
    We started cooking.
    We called the relatives.
    We called our friends.
    We did not have to call the funeral home. We are the funeral home.
    I wrote the obituary."

And Comfort eventually takes over writing the obituaries for her local newspaper. She call them "Life Notices" rather than "Death Notices". She writes the most unique obituaries you will ever read, truly celebrating the life of each person. Comfort teaches each of us to find gratitude in the sweet, funny, and even outrageous events that make up a life. I met Comfort as a reader in my 50s, and she changed so much about my outlook on life. I like to think that she has done that for many of my students too!

Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs by Betty G. Birney

More than a century ago, on a fictional farm in Sassafras Springs, Missouri, Eben McAllister has been fascinated by reading about The Seven Wonders of the World in school. He wants to take his first trip away from his "boring" home to visit relatives in Colorado. Eben's dad challenges him to find seven wonders right at home in Sassafras Springs that can rival the real Seven Wonders. Eben sets off on a journey of knocking on neighbors' doors to discover the origin stories about some ordinary seeming items. He hears magical tales about a doll that saved a life, a musical saw, an ordinary table, and an incredible wonder at the end that I won't spoil for you!

As Eben says:
"Sometimes extraordinary things begin in ordinary places. A fancy-dancy butterfly starts out in a plain little cocoon. A great big apple tree grows from a tiny speck of a seed. And the wonders started right on our own front porch on a hot summer night I would have forgotten on the spot if it hadn't been for what got started then and kept on going."
Once you start looking for the beauty in and finding gratitude in ordinary things, it's hard to stop. Eben sets a great example for all of us.

This book has held a special place in my heart for so many years. It was a favorite read-aloud for my students. We all loved how each chapter was its own little story. I based my writing lessons on it for a unit on memoirs. Each student created a "Wonder of Farmington Hills" story. (The location of our school.) Every story was a touching closer look at something that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.  One particular story still in my heart was the story about a rose that blooms each summer in one family's yard on the anniversary of the death of a favorite uncle who left them at a young age. Another was the story of how the Rainbow City (my classroom name - but you knew that, right?) Rocking Chair came to be. It was a special chair, painted and repainted every year by each new class, but of course the story of how it came to be was nothing like the real one!

We sent our collection of "The Wonders of Farmington Hills" to Betty Birney and she loved it! She sent us a beautiful letter to share with families and our school community as a celebration of our writing!

The best lesson here though, is the same as above - finding beauty and feeling gratitude when looking at simple everyday things. "Fancy-Dancy butterfly". I still love that!

What saves my life as I move through the world:

Strolling past my grandchildren's home in our neighborhood (when it's not too cold) and seeing that they are home makes my heart so happy! As I approach the door and hear our two littlest sweethearts literally shreik, "GRANDMA'S HERE!!!!!" saves my life for sure every time!

I have some grandchildren who live around the corner, and some who live on the other side of the world. Zoom and FaceTime have saved my life by allowing me to have long visits with each of the sweethearts that I've been unable to see in person since 2019. 

As I move through the snowy days in Michigan, I've been fortunate for the past few years since retirement to get away to warmer places for a little while. Although I discover new things about my Michigan neighborhood every time I go for a walk, warm weather walks such as a recent one in Venice, Florida, are definitely life saving! Although I have taken this walk last year and the year before, this time I noticed the most beautiful and colorful sculptures of seahorses and mermaids scattered throughout the downtown area. They made my walk even more of a dream! The photos and memories should keep me going throughout the second half of this snowy winter!

What saves your life? I would love to hear about it all in the comments below!

To save your teacher life and make your work easier in the days ahead, check out all the new resources at Rainbow City Learning!

For the original post, go to The Modern Mrs. Darcy's post!

0

Four Easy Ways to Encourage an Attitude of Gratitude

How do we encourage an attitude of gratitude in our students?

It's that time of year again - the time so many of us stop and say thanks for all the gifts we receive from the universe each day. It's a very reflective season, leading up to a season of giving and often of overindulgence. I often wonder at this time of year what we can offer to our students that will make the reflective and thankful aspects of Thanksgiving last throughout the year. 

How long for an action, a thought, or a practice to become a habit? I've heard varying opinions on this, but most settle at right around three weeks. I tried this out myself recently. I've done it before while going through Covey training, while making plans for my students, or after watching Oprah. This time I did it just for me. I tried to think of and write down three things each day for 21 days that I am grateful for. Sometimes I just really miss Oprah! I think she nudged so many of us to become more reflective. 

At first, it was the usual list that comes to each of our minds immediately: our families. Spouse, parents, children, siblings, grandchildren. Then maybe some special moments with each of them. Then I expected the list making to grow more difficult. The great surprise (to me anyway) was  that it became easier and easier each day to think of three things that make me feel grateful, and in fact harder and harder to stop at just three. 

Grateful for a warm breeze against my cheek here in Michigan in November.

Grateful that I can easily walk into the mall from the farthest parking spot. (This revelation should come in very handy when holiday shopping begins in earnest, and the only spots available are the farthest!)

Grateful for the first rays of sun that wake me up now that I am retired. (Got up in the dark every day for years!)

My personal list continues to grow and grow.

What's on your list? Are you comfortable sharing at least a part of it with your students? 

Introducing an attitude of gratitude to your students and building upon it until it reaches habit status just might make a difference in the atmosphere of your class in general and in the life of each of your students in particular. 

Some easy to implement suggestions:

Declare your gratitude together.

Add a declaration of gratitude to your class meeting time. 

(I'd call it morning meeting time, but most years my class meeting was never in the morning. It's so important, I think, to have that community building time, no matter what  the time slot during your busy teaching day.) Use talking sticks, a rainstick, a special ball, or even a glittered leaf to get the discussion started. As each student receives the talking prop, he/she must state one thing, person, idea, aspect of their life for which they are grateful. (OK to "pass" until some great examples have been set and all have the idea.)

Change up your playlist.

If you don't already use music to inspire your students to be kinder, better, stronger versions of themselves, now is the perfect time to start. If you already use music to enhance your teaching and your collective day, brief pause here for applause and a pat on the back. (At least a silent cheer for you, awesome teacher!) Add some songs to your daily playlist with the theme of gratitude. Two of my favorites available online for free (just click and enjoy!):

Journal it!

If your students already have journals, tab a section of it for thoughts of gratitude. If you would rather, start a new gratitude journal that kids can keep all year to nurture and continue to grow their new habit of declaring gratitude. Write right along with them at least at first. Make yours honest, heartfelt, descriptive, and a beautiful example of the way you'd like theirs to look. Use special paper, markers, pencils, etc. to embellish it. I have a Pinterest board where I save ideas for journaling that inspire me. Feel free to take a peek or to follow!

To encourage an attitude of gratitude this month, and to keep it going throughout the rest of your school year, try Rainbow City Learning's November Super Bundle! If you love this bundle, you will be happy to know that there is one for every month of the school year! Each month has a different theme.

I hope you have found a few ideas here to make this season of reflection more meaningful this year in your classroom. Please know that I am grateful for each and every one of you who reads this blog! 

If I can do anything else to help make your job easier this year, please let me know in the comments below! If I use your idea for a new blog post, you will win a TpT $10 gift card. If I create a new resource for Rainbow City Learning based on your idea, you will win a free copy of that resource to use in your classroom! (Note: all comments are reviewed before appearing on my blog. It may take a few hours for your comment to appear! Thanks for your patience!)

For more November thoughts on teaching, be sure to check out the posts below by the amazing bloggers in Teacher Talk. 

If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials at TeachersPayTeachers.com.  For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

2

Enough

Our family has a reunion every year at Thanksgiving time. We are scattered all over the country (actually all over the world) now, but each year as many as possible try to meet up for a banquet cooked by professional chefs (yay!) rather than by any of us. We meet in a hotel back where I grew up and spend several days just enjoying each other and loving on our newest generation. It takes me back to my childhood, when most of the meals were home cooked, certainly at Thanksgiving, and when most of my extended family hung out together all the time. We were there for so many of the milestones in each other's lives, sometimes because they were official and came with an invitation, and sometimes because we just happened to all be there. We were all always there, either at my parents' house, or my grandparents' house, known simply as "down the house" (In Pittsburghese, "You goin' dahn the hause?" Or, "See ya later dahn the hause." We never said yinz in our family, but we sure pronounced words like dahn and hause just that way. It brings a tear. Sigh.

Our Thanksgiving celebrations through the years always included the long table for adults and the kids' table. I believe I sat at the kids' table until I graduated from college and was married with a tiny apartment table of my own. It was a good place to be, and a great place to grow up.

We hosted a brunch at our house today, and my favorite grandson (aka only grandson) asked if we could move the kids' table to the end of the adult table so that it would be just one long table and we all could sit together. What a brilliant idea! I wish I had thought to ask my grandmother the same question. Her kids' table was seriously all the way in the living room. We always felt that we were missing something over there! Brunch was so much fun today, and the furniture arrangement just might have had something to do with it!

Thoughts of Thanksgivings past and future also brought me to the thoughts of the season of excess, which seems to start earlier and earlier each year. I thought I had finished all of my holiday shopping yesterday, but thought of several items that I wanted to add today. A tiny voice in my head said, "Enough!" The voice was right. I took some time tonight to think of all the things that I have enough of. I certainly have enough clothes to last forever. Six bags are ready for donation right now. I have a precious family to love, and I know they love me, so enough love. I have probably far more friends than any one person deserves, so enough friendship. Although I've had a couple of health related scares this year, I am mostly blessed with good health. I do request that you stay away from me though if you have not had your flu shot. Learned that the hard way. Enough food? Probably too much, given my never-ending struggles with the scale.

Yes, enough. I am so sure that I have enough that I have no holiday wish list of my own. The fifty or so days ahead might just be a good time to consider with your students and children or grandchildren, nieces, and nephews - whoever is important in your life - what exactly each of you has enough of. And then, you might want to extend the conversation to ways you can reach out and share with others who might not have enough. Some examples (some that I've talked about in previous blog posts) might be:

• Adopt a family to gather and wrap holiday gifts for.
• Pack winter comfort bags for the homeless.
• Visit an elderly residence and play board games or sing. 
• Plan an act of kindness to do every day (or even once a week) for someone else.
• Share your holiday spirit by learning more about winter holidays celebrated by others in your community and around the world.

An amazing book that I've just discovered is I am Enough by Grace Byers. It is a lovely way to remind our children that each of them is a precious gift to the world.

For resources to make your teaching life a little easier in the days ahead, and to learn about winter holidays celebrated by others, click here! Winter Holidays with Rainbow City Learning
For resources to emphasize Gratitude, click here! Celebrating Gratitude with Rainbow City Learning

In the days ahead, I wish you a seat at the table surrounded by those you love, and the most precious of gifts to open: friendship, caring, and awareness of the needs of others.

For more November thoughts and tips, be sure to check out the posts of my blogging friends.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

3

Finding Gratitude

It's been a hard week. A close member of my family is a survivor of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue massacre.  My family and larger religious community has experienced unheard of horror and sadness during the week that has just passed. When something like this happens, we have to dig down really deep to find something to be grateful for. This was a challenging week for me to seek gratitude, but seek I did.

First, I am beyond relieved that our loved one is physically safe and still here with us. As a survivor, he has a long road back emotionally. We are grateful as a family that he still walks this earth and can receive our love and hugs. We know it will take time, and we will be grateful for each day going forward when the news doesn't contain tales of more hate and destruction. We are grateful for the outpouring of love and multicultural unity that has arisen from this tragedy. I am grateful to see good people trying to do good in the world all around me.

When the world lets us down and children are filled with questions and needing to talk about it, I have always turned to literature. I find it so much easier and more effective to focus the conversation on what some of our favorite characters have done to manage their shock and sadness. Please note that any books mentioned in this post are Amazon affiliate links. You can also find them at the library!

As I searched my shelves and the internet for books on gratitude, I found mostly picture books. Those are the easy ones. Easy to work in a read aloud lesson on many days. Easy to have the whole piece to connect and discuss in a short time period. Even when adding in a chapter book as book clubs or whole class reads, I would still begin with a picture book.

Here are some favorites. Picture books first!

Be Good to Eddie Lee by Virginia Fleming

This beautiful book was on my mind this week, as two of the victims of the massacre were mentally challenged brothers who brought nothing but love and light to everyone they met. I recall them as small children visiting their cousins who were our neighbors. Like Eddie Lee, they appreciated the little things in life, like the beauty of nature and the goodness that can be found inside most of us.

On a boring summer day, Christy learns from Eddie Lee that beauty and gratitude can be found in unexpected places. Christy starts out being annoyed by Eddie Lee's always wanting to follow her around, and ends being grateful for the friendship he offers so completely.

Gratitude Soup by Olivia Rosewood

Told in poetry and illustrated with beautiful collage art, this book is a perfect prompt for your students to write their own gratitude poems and create their own gratitude collages.

When Violet, the Purple Fairy, gets a case of the "gimme gimme want wants", her mother suggests making an imaginary pot of gratitude soup. She reaches deep down and pulls up so many things that she  is grateful for to create her special soup. Luckily, the pot can be downsized to fit inside her heart, where she keeps it constantly warm.

Olivia Rosewood, the author, reminds us of the research that proves that gratitude changes brain chemistry, supporting mental and physical health. I am sure that it was the tiny pot of gratitude simmering in my heart for so many years that kept me from turning into a hater this week. It's certainly an image that is stuck in my brain now, after reading this beautiful book.


Chapter books for third, fourth, and fifth graders:

Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles

This is an old favorite from my personal and class bookshelves. I've always asked for parent permission first because the main character, Comfort Snowberger, lives in her family's funeral home and has attended 247 funerals. I always thought that might be considered too intense or scary for some kids, but I have never had a parent say that their child could not participate.

Even the first line resonates, " I come from a family with a lot of dead people." Don't we all?
Comfort says it so beautifully herself:
"...death is hard. Death is sad. But death is part of life. When someone you know dies, it's your job to keep on living.
So...we did. We adjusted. We did what we always do when death comes calling:
    We gathered together.
    We started cooking.
    We called the relatives.
    We called our friends.
    We did not have to call the funeral home. We are the funeral home.
    I wrote the obituary."

And Comfort eventually takes over writing the obituaries for her local newspaper. She call them "Life Notices" rather than "Death Notices". She writes the most unique obituaries you will ever read, truly celebrating the life of each person. Comfort teaches each of us to find gratitude in the sweet, funny, and even outrageous events that make up a life. I met Comfort as a reader in my 50s, and she changed so much about my outlook on life. I like to think that she has done that for many of my students too!

Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs by Betty G. Birney

More than a century ago, on a fictional farm in Sassafras Springs, Missouri, Eben McAllister has been fascinated by reading about The Seven Wonders of the World in school. He wants to take his first trip away from his "boring" home to visit relatives in Colorado. Eben's dad challenges him to find seven wonders right at home in Sassafras Springs that can rival the real Seven Wonders. Eben sets off on a journey of knocking on neighbors' doors to discover the origin stories about some ordinary seeming items. He hears magical tales about a doll that saved a life, a musical saw, an ordinary table, and an incredible wonder at the end that I won't spoil for you!

As Eben says:
"Sometimes extraordinary things begin in ordinary places. A fancy-dancy butterfly starts out in a plain little cocoon. A great big apple tree grows from a tiny speck of a seed. And the wonders started right on our own front porch on a hot summer night I would have forgotten on the spot if it hadn't been for what got started then and kept on going."
Once you start looking for the beauty in and finding gratitude in ordinary things, it's hard to stop. Eben sets a great example for all of us.

This book has held a special place in my heart for so many years. It was a favorite read-aloud for my students. We all loved how each chapter was its own little story. I based my writing lessons on it for a unit on memoirs. Each student created a "Wonder of Farmington Hills" story. (The location of our school.) Every story was a touching closer look at something that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.  One particular story still in my heart was the story about a rose that blooms each summer in one family's yard on the anniversary of the death of a favorite uncle who left them at a young age. Another was the story of how the Rainbow City (my classroom name - but you knew that, right?) Rocking Chair came to be. It was a special chair, painted and repainted every year by each new class, but of course the story of how it came to be was nothing like the real one!

We sent our collection of "The Wonders of Farmington Hills" to Betty Birney and she loved it! She sent us a beautiful letter to share with families and our school community as a celebration of our writing!

The best lesson here though, is the same as above - finding beauty and feeling gratitude when looking at simple everyday things. "Fancy-Dancy butterfly". I still love that!

While digging deep for some gratitude this weekend, I attended a huge Solidarity service and multicultural gathering at our Temple on Friday night. We welcomed a new Shabbat with shalom (peace) in our hearts and gratitude to God for this crazy, unpredictable world that has been entrusted to us. I was honored to have been asked to light the Shabbat candles for all to see and to read a poem with my daughter in honor of my uncle and in memory of his friends who were lost. As we said the blessing over the candles, I could feel the love pouring out from our expanded congregation, and I let the light of gratitude back into my heart.

I am grateful to have been born and raised in Pittsburgh. My upbringing has made me #PittsburghStrong and #StrongerThanHate for life. I am grateful for the home I've made and the family we have created and the friends I have found here in Michigan. I'm so very grateful for all the students I've known and hopefully reached over the years of my teaching career. And... I'm especially grateful to each of you who is reading this post.

To express my gratitude to you, I have pulled out a sample of my new Grateful Gnomes resource. I would love for you try it along with some (or all!) of the books I've talked about here as you awaken just a little more gratitude in your own students.

Find it here:

Tonight, I'll be talking about Gratitude and how to bring it into your classroom with my podcasting buddies, and we'll be announcing an amazing gratitude giveaway! (Aren't you glad you kept reading?)

It will be released on Wednesday! Check out our podcasts here and click below to enter  our giveaway and how you can win your choice of a $100.00 gift card! 

Our Podcast:

                       I hope you'll check out the posts below by our blogging crew on gratitude!





Wishing you the magic of fancy dancy butterflies, a tiny simmering pot of gratitude inside your heart, and the wonders of noticing the beauty in simple things inside your mind in the days ahead. Even that chatty class that you may have - it's a beautiful thing! Right?

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