When we are passionate about a topic or hobby, we tend to explore it in as many ways as possible. Children learn very effectively using that same process.

At the beginning of the year, our SK students learned how to recognize, spell, and write their names. Our students found a lot of joy and pride when they engaged in various name explorations.

During our author study, we read Julius, Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes. Older sister Lily is excited about the impending arrival of her new baby brother...until Julius arrives. She is jealous of all the attention but in the end, love wins. Kids identify with a story about siblings and we adored this book so much that we made our own book, SK 107 Babies of the World. We combined our curiosity about siblings and names as another Kevin Henkes book, Chrysanthemum, also inspired us. In this story, Chrysanthemum absolutely loves her name, which also happens to be the name of a flower. This got us thinking more about our own names; their meanings and their significance. We asked our SKers and their families to share the story behind both their English and Hebrew names and we were amazed at the responses. We learned that one of our students was named after her great-great grandmother who lived to be 104 years old!

We also read some wonderful and diverse books that connected with our name theme as well. We had rich discussions after reading Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal and Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow.

Our names have brought us on an enlightening journey. How did you get your name?!