Kindness and Generosity

Both these stories highlight friendship, loyalty, and kindness. What does it mean to be kind? We will learn from Lina, who is determined to bring the storks back to Shora, and Kay and Gentian, who are kind and positive despite their family’s struggles. Discover kindness between friends, communities, and families as we travel between worlds, real and imagined.
 
Day and Time: Thursdays, 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM ET
Class Duration: 4 Weeks
Dates: October 17, 2024 - November 7, 2024
Recommended for: Ages 9+ / Grades 4-5
Teacher: TTK Faculty
Required materials: 
The Wheel on the School, by Meindert DeJong
The Wind Boy, by Ethel Cook Eliot
 
The Wheel on the School, by Meindert DeJong
Why do the storks no longer come to the little Dutch fishing village of Shora to nest? It was Lina, one of the six schoolchildren who first asked the question, and she set the others to wondering. And sometimes when you begin to wonder, you begin to make things happen. So the children set out to bring the storks back to Shora.
 
The Wind Boy, by Ethel Cook Eliot
Siblings Kay and Gentian and their mother Detra, are refugees who come to live in a village, hoping against hope to hear news of their soldier-father. The people of the village shun the little family, and they live in lonely poverty.
 
That all changes when Nan, a girl “from the mountains,” comes to care for the house and children while Detra finds work. Nan can tell wonderful stories, and she makes the small house a happy home. Best of all, Nan introduces the children to the Clear Land and its people. Above the village, there is a village much like it, which one can enter if one can see it. (But of course, not everyone can.) They befriend the Wind Boy, a Clear child in disgrace until he destroys an ugly mask he made as a joke. Someone— no one knows who— found his mask and is using it to frighten children in the village. Together, Kay, Gentian, Nan, and the Wind Boy must find the culprit and destroy the mask.
 
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