Five for Friday (peace, love, and kindness!)

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share some highlights of my week.  

Last week I posted about my student that won 2nd place in a flag essay contest for the county.  It was a pretty big deal since there were about 1,100 entries.  I videotaped the presentation of the award and the student reading his essay to the entire grade.  

I sent the video home so his parents could see it since I know I would have loved to see something like that if it was one of my children.

I received this beautiful note from the parent in return!  It just made my week.  I just appreciate it so much when a parent takes the time to send a little thank you note and recognizes how much I care.  It is so easy to get caught up in day to day busy schedules that we don't often take the time to show our appreciation (even though we may be thinking it!).  I think we need to remember that all the little things we do for our students doesn't go unnoticed and parents really do love it (even though we may not always get thank you's:). 

A special parent in our school whose family owns a local farm has come in to the school for the past three years to have every student in the elementary plant a seed.  The 4th grade planted butternut squash seeds.  Each grade had a different vegetable.  

There are about 60 fourth grade squash seeds total and we will plant the seeds that germinate the best in about a week in a garden bed on school grounds.  Over the summer, parents have volunteered to care for the beds and this fall they will bring samples of all the food grown to each classroom in the elementary.  It is a great lesson for the students to see how we can use our land to grow food locally and naturally!

My students began the "Smile File" activity as seen by the amazing Stephanie on 3rd Grade Thoughts here.  They just ate this up!!  I am so proud of how they are taking the time to write a thoughtful note to each classmate.  I will take all the notecards and place them in their "Smile Files" to hand out on the last day of school.  It has been a peaceful activity we do when we have 10-15 extra minutes.  They work quietly while I play music softly from iTunes:)

We were blessed to be able to go on an awesome field trip today to take a ride on the Erie Canal!  There were two locks we traveled through going both directions and here are the doors of one of the locks opening.

There is also a great museum at this location.  Here the students are using a model of the locks to really get a visual of how they work.

Finally, I had a rough week personally and could use some prayers for our family.  My husband's step-father and uncle (different sides of the family-not brothers) have both been diagnosed with cancer this week.  It has been quite a blow to our family and they are both only about 60 years old.  My husband's step-father has been given two months to live and the cancer has spread from his lungs to multiple organs.  My husband's uncle has a rare form of cancer that only affects 1% of cancer patients.  It is located between the pancreas and liver and is inoperable.  He is starting chemo on Monday to prolong his life by an estimate of up to two years.  We could really use some prayers and have been trying to find peace by turning to our Savior.  Our local community has been so supportive and our pastor met with us last night until well after 11p.m.  Thank you so much for any thoughts and prayers!

This post reminded me of the Peace, Hope, Love, and Kindness linky that I have wanted to participate in that is hosted by Jivey at Ideas by Jivey, Joanne at Head Over Heels for Teaching, and Amanda & Stacia at Collaboration Cuties.  I didn't think of it until after I was typing my Five for Friday (I hope it is okay that I am linking up double!).  

• The note from the parent was filled with kindness and love.  
• The students planting reminds me of hope for a future generation that will look after and take care of the land and the gifts it provides.  
• Watching my students work on the "Smile Files" with love and kindness just gave me a sense of peace.  
• I feel so blessed to be able to go on field trips like we went on today and it gives me peace knowing that the students learned something today that they would never have been able to learn in the classroom.  
• I shared with you a personal story of some tragic news my family received this week because I know my fellow teacher bloggers care.  The love and kindness that is shown by bloggers is so inspiring.  Perfect strangers can build connections that I never thought was possible.  So, thank you for filling me with a sense of peace, hope, love, and kindness tonight as I share my stories with you.