Celebrations!

Last night I got a voice mail message from a little girl I had in Kindergarten last year.  It went like this:  “Hi Mrs. Senk.  This is Aspen.  I lost my tooth today.  It came out at lunch.  I just wanted you to know.”

The message made me smile, and of course I called her right back.  I think Aspen was remembering, and missing,  how we celebrated lost teeth in kindergarten.  I loved finding things to celebrate with my class.  When a child lost a tooth at school, or at home the night before, we always sang the “Lost Tooth” song.  The class stood up in a circle and the child with the missing tooth walked around with their mouth open so we could all admire the empty space.  The song was to the tune of “The Famer in the Dell,” and went like this:

Aspen lost a tooth

Aspen lost a tooth

Smile at us so we can see

Aspen lost a tooth!

Obviously this little celebration only took a few minutes, then the child would write their name on a large tooth shape labeled with the current month – I had a set that I used from year to year – I just cut out construction paper teeth and stuck alphabet stickers on that spelled each month, then laminated them.   I preferred this to graphing who lost a tooth because I found out some children can be sensitive about the fact that they had not lost a tooth yet by the end of kindergarten.

I also had little necklaces that held a plastic tooth that opened up to hold a tooth that fell out at school.  When we talked about Dental Health I sent one home with each child, just to be sure they all got one.

We celebrated other important things too:

New shoes!

Again the class stood in a circle and everyone sang – the new shoe child stuck out one foot at a time for us to admire the new footwear – then skipped (or galloped!) around the circle.

The tune is This Old Man

Here’s one foot

Here are two

Each is wearing a brand new shoe

So skip and hop

All around the floor

That’s what these new shoes are for.

I clarified for the children that we could call any shoes new if they were new to us – hand me downs qualified too, but only the first time we wore them to school.

We also celebrated new haircuts!

The tune was Mary Had a Little Lamb

Megan has a new haircut

A new hair cut

A new hair cut

Megan has a new hair cut

Happy haircut Megan!

 

Of course we celebrated birthdays and lots of other special things too!  I will share more of those later – off to do last minute shopping and admire Christmas decorations!