The Bonfire 🔥 night was a fantastic event. The PTA did an incredible job organizing all. We especially appreciated the moms cooking in the kitchen, the parking detail, the Crane Club babysitting, the teachers helping with set-up and clean-up, Mr. Barker for keeping the tradition alive and building the fire! The students’ enthusiasm made the evening truly special.
It was loved ❤️ by ALL!
Bus riders:🚌
Please email buschange@hiroshima-is.ac.jp when NOT riding the bus by noon each day. Let’s be considerate of others. Please aim to be on the bus by 3:20 each day. Waiting for latecomers holds up everyone.
Parent Coffees ☕
Grades 3-5 Parent Coffee on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024 8:50-9:30am, Please lookout for the details from the teachers.
Don’t miss our next School Wide Parent Coffee on Friday, November 22nd! Learn valuable strategies from the SEL Counselor to support your child’s well-being.
Please sign up here
The Power of Gratitude
The holiday season often inspires feelings of gratitude. But what exactly is gratitude, and why is it so important?
Gratitude is simply the feeling of thankfulness and appreciation. It’s about recognizing and cherishing the good things in our lives. By practicing gratitude, we can experience a multitude of benefits.
When we express gratitude, we strengthen our bonds with loved ones. We feel more connected to those around us.
Gratitude also helps us appreciate the things we often take for granted. From basic necessities like food and shelter to the simple joys of life, practicing gratitude allows us to recognize and value these blessings.
To cultivate gratitude, take a few moments each day to reflect on what you’re thankful for. Whether it’s a small act of kindness, a beautiful sunset, or a loving relationship, focusing on the positive can significantly enhance your overall well-being.
Things to do as a family:
1 Daily Gratitude Sharing
Having a daily family sharing practice is a great tool for building connection. Sharing one (or more) things we’re grateful for not only makes for a positive conversation but also helps us each – individually – grow our gratitude muscle. Sharing about what we’re grateful for can be at dinner, on the car ride to school, at bedtime, or whatever time works best with your family’s schedule. Just make it a daily habit and everyone will get used to it.
When we’ve tried this, it seems to eventually warrant some kind of guidelines about what types of things are “shareable.” For example, being thankful for a particular video game might be appropriate to share once, but it’s best to encourage sharing about people and events (in addition to material things) we are grateful for. Perhaps, if you normally share “Highs and Lows,” you can switch to sharing “3 Good Things” just for the month of November?
2 Gratitude Jar or Board
This can be an ongoing family gratitude tradition, possibly kicked off at Thanksgiving and ending on New Year’s Eve. For the jar, people jot down things they are grateful for and put the notes inside. On a specified day (end of the year is good but any time works!), empty the jar and read the notes so the whole family can reflect on individual and group blessings.
A bulletin board is a more visual way to show thanks. Simply tack the notes up as you think of things you’re thankful for. For my family, whether doing the jar or the board, having a minimum daily requirement of one note per person helps make it a habit and fill up our jar or board.
3 Thankful “Warm Fuzzies” at Thanksgiving
This is one of my favorite activities and something we’ve done for many years. Each family member and visiting friend has an oversized place card at their dining spot. Throughout the afternoon and evening, people write something they appreciate or are grateful for about each person. (We sometimes call these “WOW“s.)
You can write just a few words or a whole sentence, but each person needs to write on everyone else’s card. These are really fun keepsakes that provide a nice boost to each family member. Another way to do this that ensures it happens is by passing the cards around until each person has signed each other person’s card. It’s helpful if one person keeps time and gives everyone 1 minute for each note. When your own card gets back to you, you’ve completed your warm fuzzies!
4 Gratitude Journal
Making gratitude journals was a craft activity we did as a family many years ago. We had a lot of fun creating the journals, but we didn’t all keep up with writing in them regularly. I chalk that family activity up as a failure, but at least we used $1 composition books instead of fancy journals!
Although I and a few of my kids really enjoy journaling, the rest of my family does not. And gratitude journaling is not something that has any benefit if the person writing is feeling resentful.
Sharing aloud, at dinner or bedtime (see #1), is ideal for young kids and those who don’t enjoy writing. Perhaps a written alternative would be a family gratitude journal, completed by a parent or designated scribe, where everyone shares what they’re grateful for, and one person writes things down. This could be an alternative to having a family gratitude jar or gratitude board.
I now practice gratitude as part of my daily journaling by listing three things I’m grateful for before I write anything else. Many planners now have space to list what you’re grateful for. I highly recommend this simple practice that gets you focused on the good stuff to start your day!
This could also be a practice you do with a friend by texting each other your “3 Good Things” each day in November!
5 Giving to Others
Perhaps the best way to promote gratitude in our children and ourselves is giving to or serving others. There are so many opportunities this time of year (and all year long, for that matter) to participate in collection and delivery of food, toys for children, winter coats, and more. There are so many needy people – often right next door to us or in our own families – and reaching out to help others not only makes us more kind and compassionate, but also more appreciative of what we have.
In this episode of the podcast, Natalie Silverstein shares many simple ideas for promoting simple acts of service in our families, including many ideas that can be done at home, don’t take up too much time, or can be made part of our daily or weekly routines.
Video – Gratitude
My gratitude is the HIS community! Thank you for all that you do! ❤️
Computational Thinking Challenge ➕➖✖️➗
On November 11, MYP and grade 5 students will take the Bebras challenge, which is a set of logic puzzles which test aptitude for programming. It would be great if students could practice at home using the review challenges on this page:
https://bebras.uk/index.php?action=user_competitions
Save the Date:📅
- Nov. 12, 2024 – Grade 3-5 Parent Coffee – 8:50-9:30am ☕
- Nov. 22, 2024- Parent Coffee 8:45-10am- Meet the Counselor ☕
- Nov. 27-29, 2024- Grade 5 Camping Trip 🏕️
- Dec. 6, 2024 – Festive Eve Dress rehearsal
- Dec. 7, 2024- Festive Eve 🎭
- Dec. 9, 2024- No School
- Dec. 18, 2024 – Early Dismissal 13:00- start of Winter Break
- Dec. 18-19, 2024 – DP Study Camp 📚
WolfPack PTA
Happy Bonfire Night!
We would like to give one more huge thank you to everyone who made the Halloween Carnival a success. It took a lot of creativity to move everything inside at the last minute, but thanks to everyone’s flexibility, things turned out great in a brand new way! Thank you to the Kondo family and the Goto family for their generous donations! Thank you to the Trunk-or-Treat volunteers that turned our Hallways into a festive place to Trick-or-Treat! Thank you to the teachers who stayed late to help watch kids and make everything run smoothly. And thank you to everyone who volunteered to help with games and the logistics of the night. We couldn’t have done it without you!
The PTA snack shop will be open during snack time next week on Wednesday and Thursday, November 13-14. If you would like your child to participate, please send them with money on those days. Snacks and drinks will cost 100-200 yen each.
Tonight is Bonfire Night! It looks like we have great weather for the event. We are hard at work with volunteers at the school preparing. Let’s have a great time celebrating together!
The PTA Wolfpack
Photos of the Week
Click here to view the photos of the week.
