“Where is Sophie?”: Connecting with Middle School Students

You may have heard the names Tori, Sam, Nestor, Kalina, Baxter, Owen, Sophie and Victoria from your preschooler. For many of the Trees children a highlight of their classroom experience is when they spend time with older students.  At Mustard Seed we intentionally provide many opportunities for cross–grade relationships to develop and we see that both the young children and the older students benefit from these experiences.  This year, middle school students have helped with our special Christmas and Easter worships, and they have helped to carry donations to In Jesus’ Name with the preschoolers as part of their Service Team duties.

Early in the school year, middle school students were given the opportunity to apply to “intern” in the preschool. Students filled out applications, expressing why they would be interested in such a placement, and from those applications, several students were selected to serve with us.  Every Wednesday morning since then, we have had 2 middle school students join the Trees Class for part of our morning.  The pairs of interns have each stayed with our class for a few weeks at a time. They play, talk, help and read with the preschool students, and many children have become very connected to them and look forward to their arrival each Wednesday, often asking, “Where is Sophie?” (or whichever friend they are thinking about) early in the morning.  The joy runs in both directions!

Both the younger children and the older children learn from these experiences.  The students work on developing compassion, connection, kindness, patience and responsibility.  Sometimes, children also learn information from one another.  In the fall, when we were doing our senses study and Braille came up, some middle schoolers who had created Braille signs around the school came and taught the children about how and why they did this project.   This week, we welcomed a 6th grade visitor,Victoria.  She came to talk about an initiative that she is undertaking: introducing composting school-wide.

Victoria shared information about the process of composting and taught the children about some of the types of things that can and cannot go into compost.   Many of the preschoolers have been composting daily for almost two years at school, so they shared some of the information and processes that they know with Victoria and even came up with the idea to present a gift to her: A compost container like the one the Trees children use to take their food scraps to the compost bins at the park, to help the middle school get started with their composting.  The preschoolers were as delighted to give it to Victoria as she was to receive it!

So much comes out of the relationships between older and younger students.  You might ask your child to tell you about what they enjoyed about their time with their middle school friends today!