Friendship messages help kids practice giving and receiving compliments



Lift off, Jeanie Tomanek, painter. 
This is her website and Etsy storeI think receiving a friendship message 
makes a person feel uplifted like the girl in this picture. 

We have an encouragement feast today, a practice of giving and receiving compliments. I wrote about them in a previous post. It is a marvelous activity for families and classrooms. 

After the feast, we write friendship messages. The only rule is that you sign your name. The children write messages to each other or a parent. This message is for Brennyn. Ansel writes, "I like when you play with me a lot."


Ansel writes a friendship message.

Here is a message a child wrote to me when I taught at Dublin Montessori Academy. I pasted it in my journal.


And a few others I saved. It is interesting to me that over the years some children spontaneously call me "Aunt Susan." Brenna, the writer of the message on green paper, addresses me that way. Kate, a former student and now a Montessori teacher and mom to her son Charlie, still refers to me as aunt in emails.