Beasley C.A.R.E.S. — Lower School Community Day 2024

Beasley Community Day is certainly a favorite day in the MICDS Lower School, and this special day was held with a lot of “C.A.R.E.S.” on Friday, April 26. “We have been working all year on five words which are connected to our social emotional learning curriculum: cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy, and self-control,” said Amy Scheer, Head of Lower School. “We use the acronym C.A.R.E.S. to help students remember them, and the theme for Community Day was Beasley C.A.R.E.S. so we could reinforce what students have learned while working together to build community.”

 

The activities for the morning were each connected to one of the five words. For the word assertiveness, our Junior Kindergarteners through fourth graders read the book Change Sings to learn how important it is to hear everyone’s voice. Students worked together in groups to create a guitar that represented the ideas from the book, and then they traveled to a Middle or Upper School class to share their message with the older students. In the morning, they also played self-control games, read Last Stop on Market Street, and engaged in conversation and a group collage to reinforce empathy. They built a tower together to demonstrate cooperation and participated in the Beasley Book Swap, which emphasized responsibility.

 

The first graders participated in a short skit to announce the Book Drive to the MICDS Community this year. Robyn Williams, Lower School Coordinator of Instructional Technology, recorded the students and the video was shared with the homeroom teacher to view with their students. The first graders also placed posters they created around the building to provide information about the event. The Book Drive was from Friday, April 19 to Thursday, April 25. Students sorted the books into genres to display in the first-grade classrooms for our Book Swap on Community Day. During the Book Swap, each Lower School student could browse the collection of books and select one to add to their home library.

During the Book Drive, book bins were placed outside the first-grade classrooms every morning so students could donate their books. The first graders counted the books, and the daily totals were posted on a wall in the lower school hallway. This year, the students collected 1,660 books, which will be donated to an elementary school in the St. Louis community and the organization Books for Newborns, a 100% volunteer non-profit organization that partners with St. Louis-area hospitals and social service agencies to provide books and other reading materials to low-income mothers and their families. On the last day of the Book Drive, the first-grade students cheered with excitement when counting the books, as they discovered they had exceeded their goal of collecting 1,000 books.

 

In the afternoon, Beasley students participated in the Kids Heart Challenge which is the chance to give back to the larger community by supporting the American Heart Association. “We raised $11,800 for the American Heart Association,” shared Sue Orlando, Lower School Physical Education Teacher. “We have been doing this event for at least 35 years.” The students could run, jump, and climb over objects on the awesome obstacle course, jump rope, hula hoop, and run the track to stay active during the Kids Heart Challenge. Some students ran two full miles during their 35-minute session. Thank you to all who supported the Kids Heart Challenge!

Thank you to all of Beasley for showing your C.A.R.E.S. to one another on this very special Community Day in the Lower School!