Family Time

A few years back I attended a workshop with several teachers from Elwick which focused on making authentic relationships amongst children and how making these kinds of deep relationships can foster a stronger learning experience for all kids. Needless to say the workshop was amazing and we began to think of how we could create and foster these authentic relationships at Elwick. We came up with and idea we call FAMILY TIME.

Family time began with mixing up the students in our five grade 2/3 multi-age classes and linking them up with a teacher, learning support teacher or Educational Assistant from another classroom. Students would spend an hour a cycle engaging in activities from art, to storytelling to cooperative games, with the goal to have children connect with both other kids from other classrooms as well with other adults in the school.

Family time continued for a second year this same way. We are now in our third year of family time and it looks a little different and has many more students and adults involved.

How Family Time looks now:

-7 grade 1, 2 and 3 classrooms are involved with 12 adults

-5 grade 4/5 classrooms are involved with 10 adults

The next goal is to in some way involve our middle years classrooms in the coming years!

Every year we change up the groups once or twice to allow more positive connections for the students. We have just wrapped up our Family Time groups and are about to switch. Our last time together was spent enjoying a healthy snack (which we often do) and writing kind words about each other on pieces of paper that each student could then take away and keep!

Here were some of the words we brainstormed:

Then students spent some time writing words, drawing pictures or writing comments on each others paper:

I feel so honoured to have met these students and cannot wait to met and get to know the next group!
See you in the hallways and on the playground A, J, K, S, H, C, S, C, M! :) :)

With love and respect,

Nicole