what is love?

This past week the Kindergarteners investigated the word love. On Monday I asked the question; What is love? We discussed the question during morning meeting and returned to it during our closing circle. Children thoughtfully responded with the sentence, Love is...

Love is pushing in chairs.
Love is my family.
Love is our community.
Love is wiping tables.
Love is peace.
Love is sorting books.
Love is snowboarding with my mom.
Love is helping my friends.
Love is snowshoeing with my dad.

I typed and printed their sentences. On Wednesday morning each child reread their sentence and counted the words in their sentence. We pointed to the first word and the last word, noticing the period as punctuation ending the sentence.

The children then cut out each word in their sentence and put the words back in order on their red canvas. Again, they reread their sentence, ensuring their words were in order. Using our special art pens, the children represented their sentence with an illustration. We discussed how illustrations are used to show your thinking, similar to our work during writing workshop.

Our love investigation was a celebration of the power in relationships and small acts of kindness, such as pushing in a chair. We discussed how the love for our community is part of every day - from offering to wipe the tables after snack to sorting and organizing our books. Our friends and families are important - a moment snowshoeing in the woods with dad is love and so is finding peace.

While our investigation was rich with reflection, there were important literacy components to our work - answering a question with a sentence orally, reading a sentence, cutting out each word to build a sentence, finding sight words, and noticing punctuation. We ended our work with a museum walk around our classroom admiring all of the colorful and detailed illustrations and organized sentences!

What is love to you and your family?