Present Day

I mentioned before that my students invented their own holidays. I have favorites. I can’t help it. My favorite holidays are the ones that celebrate or lift up others. Yay-Day was pretty great. Similarly, Present Day is pretty awesome. M chose it to coincide with his birthday. Given that, you might think that he was just looking for presents for himself. Nope!

Present Day is a day where we pick a recipient — Secret Santa style — from the kids in our classroom, and gift them with a hand made gift. We talked about what these gifts may be. Students’ ideas included drawings, poems, cards, cootie catchers/fortune tellers, and paper airplanes. This is a simple holiday, but a sweet one. I think that’s part of its power. You don’t have to do a lot, just do something nice for one of your classmates. I love it so much.

I’ll leave you with one of the pieces of art that I made. I’ve enjoyed drawing on sticker paper this year. The kids love getting personalized stickers. I got Riley as my Present Day recipient, and since he’s a Mandalorian fan, I drew him a trio of stickers that go with that show.