Bringing Thankfulfor to a Preschool!
Guest Post by Heidi Estrin, Library Media Specialist, Nadel Center for Early Childhood Education at Congregation B’nai Israel, Boca Raton, FL
I am the librarian and computer teacher for a large synagogue preschool in Florida. Each week I offer story times and computer lab sessions for children ages 2-5, and I look for books and computer activities that will support our school’s curriculum. Of course, during November we teach the children about Thanksgiving, so I read them Thanksgiving stories and do Thanksgiving computer art projects with them. This fall, I was in the midst of planning out my Thanksgiving lesson when I came across Thankfulfor.com.
I’d already been planning to ask the children to brainstorm what they were thankful for, and to turn their answers into a word cloud at Wordle.net, but I was pleased to have another option for sharing their ideas. I tried it out with some of the “older” classes (meaning the classes for 3-year-olds and Pre-K children), who are a little more articulate than the younger kids. I could tell that the topic had been discussed in their classrooms, because they were ready to go with answers like “I’m thankful for my mommy and daddy” and “I’m thankful for my friends.” A few more independent thinkers said things like “I’m thankful for Lion Country Safari” (a local theme park) or “I’m thankful for everyone on the planet” or my favorite “I’m thankful for the University of Miami” (a young Hurricanes fan!). I explained to the children that this was a website than anyone could see, and that their parents could check it out from home to see what we’d said, and could enter their own thanks as well. I also read them a few examples of thankful thoughts from other users. If you’d like to see the posts I made on behalf of my students, please visit http://thankfulfor.com/users/MissHeidi.
I must admit that the results of this experiment were mixed. The disadvantage to using a text-based site like Thankfulfor is that it doesn’t really engage preliterate children. In addition, they are not at a developmental stage where they can empathize with the faceless strangers who are the site’s other users.
The advantage of using Thankfulfor.com with the children was that it allowed me to emphasize the interactive and collaborative nature of the web, a concept that I return to again and again in my lessons. The site also has great appeal for their teachers and parents, and by adding a link on the school’s blog, I hope to draw parents into using the site one-on-one with their children at home, where individualized attention can compensate for the children’s preliterate state.
I believe that with children who are able to read and write, Thankfulfor would be a wonderful tool in the classroom or at home. The opportunity to type in their own thankful thoughts and see them posted on the screen would be exciting for older kids, and the thankful thoughts posted by other users would make for interesting conversation-starters within a family or a classroom. In my own use of Thankfulfor, I’ve been enjoying the feeling of making my gratitude “official” by posting happy thoughts as they arise. It helps me remember positive experiences that might otherwise fade away after a few days. Reading others’ posts helps me to feel connected to the affirmative energy of the world at large.
I highly recommend Thankfulfor as a fun hands-on exercise for literate kids (and of course for adults) for Thanksgiving, for the New Year, for religious or spiritual training situations, and for everyday use! I’m thankful for Thankfulfor!
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