Learning to be Leaders

Week 3: September 5-8, 2017

Our young heroes have been taking on many leadership roles in our early learners studio. During one of the discussions, each hero shared how they would like to lead others. They made promises to lead others to be kind, nice, and helpful. They often volunteer to help hand out badge books, papers, and writing tools. What a blessing to see our nation’s future leaders practice servant leadership skills! Some heroes also led discussions and asked other heroes questions. They lead each other to stay on schedule, referring to the daily schedule and the clock, in which they are even becoming more aware of when to start our five-minute timers during transitions. They are all eager to take their turn leading prayers, worship, and super hero promise statements. During core skills time, many older heroes offer help to the younger ones, even without being asked. They also lead others with etiquette and good manners. It is truly evident that each of our young heroes is God’s masterpiece, created to do good things and impact the world!

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader. I have no doubts about that! Our heroes just love snuggling up in our library with a book, either by themselves or sharing and laughing with friends. They also love taking turns to be the storyteller and pick a story to read to their friends. Every time I see our heroes find joy in reading a book, I am filled with hope, believing that they are building such a strong foundation for their learning with a strong motivation to read. They read for the sheer pleasure of reading!

We enjoyed listening to one of the middle school heroes play the ukulele and we also got to try it out ourselves. Some of our heroes even composed their own songs on the ukulele!

Diagnosis Fun was our play-based learning theme this week, which really opened up our heroes’ imaginations as they tried different roles as doctors, nurses, and emergency medical technicians. Our tables transformed into an ambulance. Pillows were laid out for patients.

And doctors treated their patients by reading them books to help them feel better!

Our heroes got many ideas for their businesses after our field trip to the Ada Farmers Market. Many heroes liked how a stuffed toy chicken on one of the tables was very effective in drawing customers so they decided to take that idea and also use a stuffed toy animal for their business displays. Another hero drew from that idea but instead of a stuffed toy, since his products were sports related, he would display his team’s flag to draw some sports fans to his business. One of our heroes was so excited when one of the tables also sold lemonade with their tortilla so she thought about adding cookies to her lemonade stand. Being able to see different ways tents and tables were set up for each business gave our heroes really good ideas how to set up their displays for the business fair. And thanks to our elementary/middle school buddies, we have completed our business plans and are so much more excited for the children’s business fair!