BY JESSICA STEELEY
Clarkston News Staff Writer

Clarkston Elementary students taught their peers about wellness for their mind, body, heart and soul during the school’s Celebration of Learning Day.
“We want the kids to have an opportunity to showcase the things they’ve learned this year, and for the last couple of years we have connected that to our school-wide academic service learning project,” Principal Brian Adams said. “This year we were having our students providing the service of teaching each other about wellness and well-being and making connections to the curriculum we have in Clarkston.”
As a Leader in Me school, Adams said the day helps empower students to be leaders and take initiative to deliver information to other students and help them grow, allowing the school to facilitate learning, rather than just deliver curriculum.
“The creativity and imagination it takes for them to create the amazing things they come up with – it’s just a great way for them to sharpen their saw,” Adams said. “Using their gifts and talents and whatever they have that is unique and special about them, to be able to share that information and cover content for the other students.”
Fifth grade teacher Kelly Fuller said it’s important to teach kids about wellness at a young age, giving them strategies to stay balanced and handle stress. Each grade focused on a different topic and worked to tie it to curriculum and wellness.
Fuller said kindergarten did purposeful play, another district initiative, and first grade did reading and tied that to a healthy mind.
“They had to do a wax museum where they dressed up as characters from books, and they had a pamphlet and a brochure and they had costumes and anyone who would come up would hear about the character,” Fuller said.
Second graders displayed their water color paintings for visitors and discussed the importance of water and how it helps maintain health. Third graders tied science concepts to fruits and vegetables.
“Some had PowerPoint presentations they did, or posters they made, and then they each had a healthy recipe they contributed to a recipe book that’ll be copied and passed out,” Fuller said.
Tinkering with fairy tales was done by fourth grades, and fifth graders combined exercising and Newton’s laws of motion. “Having a healthy body is important for wellness, and so they took what they learned about laws of motion and made and designed exercises,” Fuller said. “They were super excited to design poster boards and do all sort of activities for kids that can come and learn from them. So, it’s a great day to give them a voice and give them a chance and opportunity to really show what they’ve learned and kind of what our story is here, and to have parents come too.”
Clarkston Elementary has a very involved parent community, Fuller said, and she’s excited about all the family members that came.
“We hear a lot of comments like ‘I didn’t even know that he could do this, he’s comfortable speaking in front of a group’ and, ‘My child’s 5 and he’s leading this activity with older kids’,” Fuller said. “It’s really neat for them to see what the kids are capable of doing and what we’re all about here and what we do every day.”