Spending time with family and friends often reminds us of how challenging it is to help our children become both generous givers and gracious receivers.  Fred Rogers shared his ideas for promoting this development in The Giving Box: Create a Tradition of Giving with Your Children  (Running Press, 2000).  He stressed the important point that even the most independent among us needs help at times and that our experiences in receiving loving gifts help prepare us to give lovingly.  “Becoming independent is much more than mastering new skills.  One of the most important parts of independence is knowing there are times when you can be helpful by giving things to others” (Rogers, 2000, p. 8).

Early childhood is a perfect time to model the reciprocity of helping and being helped, as well as to explicitly discuss the ways that each of us receives and gives assistance.  At the Children’s School, we emphasize this exchange from the first interactions we have in the morning when we work as a team to greet the children.  We thank the children for their smiles and hugs even as we help them enter the school and remember to follow their morning routines.  Giving notes to the staff, taking responsibility for classroom jobs and cleaning up also provide key opportunities for children to be helpers.  As you prepare to spend several weeks together during the winter break, I encourage you to both notice and mention the giving and receiving of help that occurs on a daily basis.  At the same time, you might also want to consider opportunities for you and your children to recognize gifts, particularly by offering thanks and making thank you notes.  The time we take to show appreciation is a gift in itself.

One way the Children’s School family will acknowledge the many gifts we have received is by collecting new and gently used books to support early childhood programs that lost supplies in the Hurricane Katrina flooding.  This whole school collection will begin now and continue through the first two weeks of January.  We would also appreciate families contributing money to help defray the cost of shipping the books to the Southern Early Childhood Association (SECA), which is coordinating the donation efforts.  Any funds received in excess of what we need for shipping will be used to purchase teacher resources from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).  Those resources will be shipped directly from NAEYC to the SECA.

Please bring your book donations to the top of the stairs where there will be a box to collect the books.  Financial donations can be given to Mrs. Simpson.  Please make your check payable to the Children’s School and write “Books for the Gulf Coast” in the memo.