Kate’s Club presented to 24 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade classrooms at Norton Elementary School in Gwinnett County this week. That’s 600 students who participated in the KC Connects Outreach program in one week! We are scheduled to present to 36 more elementary school classrooms during the next four weeks. These interactive presentations include a project called the “Kindness Tree.” The project begins as a poster with a hand-drawn tree (thank you, star Kate’s Club volunteer, Susan!). The curriculum focuses on three important aspects of grief and loss, and each aspect has a corresponding activity related to the tree.
1. Community: Students define what a “community” means. Then ask questions such as, “How does a community learn together and support one another?” and “How is a classroom defined as a community?” Students are asked to decide on a name for their classroom community, and a heart with the community’s name written on it is placed on the tree.2. Grief: What is grief? Responses can range from the sad feeling we have when we miss someone or something that we wish we could see or see more often. The corresponding emotions we feel along with that sad feeling are discussed. Students are asked to think of who or what they are grieving. Students are encouraged to share their stories and write the name of someone or something they miss on a leaf. Then, each student comes forward to tape a leaf on the tree.
3. Kindness: Students provide answers about how to be a good friend to someone sad. A discussion about their wants and needs when they are sad is facilitated. That discussion leads to a brainstorming activity about how the students can be kind and caring members of their classroom community. Students are asked to write one way in which they can be kind to someone sad on a hand-shaped piece of paper. Then, each student comes forward one more time and places their ‘pledge’ around the base of the tree.
After the tree is filled, students then tell a bit about what they wrote, either on the leaf or the hand, and the presentation closes by noticing that the sadness of the stories on the leaves is being held up by the caring of the kindness of the hands-on and around the tree.
Would you like to share your story? Please get in touch with Kate's Club! KC has free grief support with grief resources, grief counseling resources, grief training, and volunteer work in Atlanta and surrounding places in Georgia. Kate's Club is a growing nonprofit in Atlanta with grief specialists for kids and young adults going through bereavement. Our goal is to make a world where it is okay to grieve.