Friendship and Kindness at Joshua Early Childhood Center

At the Joshua Early Childhood Center we value connectedness, kindness, and the spreading of joy across our school. One of our founding philosophies at Joshua Early Childhood Center is to “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” We take this seriously with each other, with our kids, and with our families. So, for Valentine’s Day, we thought it would be a great idea to delve more into what kindness means to us and our kids -- toddlers to preschoolers.

Fostering kindness and inclusion across classrooms is something we strive to do every day with our students and our teachers. Our early childhood teachers write “apples” to honor each other and share shout outs about things they’re grateful for. From being open-minded to jumping in and helping out without being asked, teachers write apples for each other for all kinds of things!

For our kids, kindness looks a little different. Some of our students visit other classrooms on a weekly or even a daily basis to build friendships and learn from one another. Students from our center-based, early intervention classrooms and from our general education classrooms visit one another for a variety of groups, games, academic activities, and daily routines like lunch and play time.

Just this week, one of our early intervention students shared a story all about her and her favorite things. Students loved learning that they had so much in common. From reading books to sharing hugs and playing with princesses, so many students had so much in common no matter which classroom they were from.

Here is a glimpse of some of the cross-classroom friendships that have formed between Joshua Early Childhood’s preschoolers.

We even decided to try to get a group of classrooms together for a yoga class geared towards kindness and friendship on Valentine’s Day. Our vision for the class was that it would be centered on building self-esteem and providing the opportunity to engage in more foundational social skills through partner poses.

It was big and wild, but it was so fun, and we can’t wait to do something like it again!

If you enjoyed this post, read more blog posts on our Joshua Early Childhood Blog page.