Margret Stöckler
Heart Projects
Happiness has landed in St. Marein elementary school…
Together with her first graders, Ms. Ingrid Schöttel carried out a wonderful heart project on the topic of "happiness."
We thank you for the great report and photos! 
Starting from the body and feelings, the children discussed the topic: "What makes me happy? How do I feel when I'm happy? What is a positive feeling, what is a negative feeling? How can I express this with my body? How can I make others happy? The students' statements were collected, and each child could design their heart with text and drawings... The small white hearts were then glued onto a large red heart. To illustrate that happiness can also be shared, we wrote "It's nice that you exist" on small hearts in different colors, attached a candy to them, and distributed these hearts in all classes of our school. It was a very successful action, as all students, teachers, and the school janitor were very happy about it. The fourth grade, with their class teacher Ms. Daniela Stoxreiter, surprised us the next day with individually designed suns and the song "You are my sunshine."
The second grade also came with Ms. Director Sylvia Gölly with lovingly crafted shamrocks, and the students gave them to the first-grade children. Other homemade shamrocks with the phrase "I love you / I like you" were given by the second-grade children to their parents. The third-grade children, with their class teacher Ms. Christine Pichler, designed a poster that they gave to us. Furthermore, they wrote nice reports and collected them in a folder.Thus, happiness returned to us, and the joy of the first graders was immense. Together we sang the song "It's nice that you exist." The happiness project then continued with the "Oups" hand puppet. We listened to Oups stories, looked at Oups pictures, and painted a very personal OUPS in art class…
Every day, the hand puppet gets to sit at a different child's desk… Since mutual appreciation and mindfulness are very important for harmonious coexistence, we regularly do exercises with a chime that they pass on to others with positive and encouraging words. Furthermore, a fantasy journey to a place that made or makes them particularly happy was conducted, followed by a discussion and a drawing. The drawings were bound into a "happiness book."
Since the topic of "germination and sowing" was currently relevant in science class, we sowed a heart with cress seeds on cotton wool and observed the progress of our cress heart daily. When the cress was tall enough, there was a delicious snack!As another activity, a heart tree made of sheep's wool was created in a special workshop with some parents. Each child could felt their own heart tree from colorful wool.
It is wonderful to see that Oups is increasingly finding its way into schools! This is shown by the loving design of the children's artwork in our Heart Education competitions, and it almost seems as if Oups has "magical powers" with which he can enchant children!
We regularly receive emails with touching lines about the special Oups magic that has spread in the classroom, and sometimes also reports about big heart projects. We thank you very much for this! We love this mail and are happy to be inspired to new ideas and start the upcoming projects with even more enthusiasm!
Please tell us about your Oups activities, your Oups rituals, tell us how you like our workbooks and accompanying booklets and the heart songs… We welcome ideas, suggestions, and all forms of feedback!!!
Please take the time to send your lines – whether short or long – to my address: m.stoeckler@werteart.com.
I hope a lot of mail flutters into my "mailbox" and I look forward to seeing you again on Facebook!
