Life is Like a Box of. . .

I brought in a large heart shaped box of chocolates and asked my students to guess what was inside. Of course they guessed chocolates, but I wanted them to be more specific. So they threw out different flavor ideas. I told them we were each going to take a chocolate and eat it without knowing what was inside. (Be sure to check for allergies first!) Everyone was surprised by the caramel or strawberry or coconut that greeted them when they bit down. Using the quote from Forest Gump, I introduced the idea that just like a box of chocolates, life is unpredictable. They thought it was funny that I compared chocolate to life. Then I said, “Life is like a box of barbeque potato chips - sometimes spicy and always really good.”

I gave each student one side of an empty holiday card box or the box lid (I collected these from my school staff after the holidays) and asked them to think of what life was like for them. Each student decorated the inside of their box with handmade pictures of the items they chose. Then they wrote their answers on accompanying index cards.

We hung everything on a bulletin board titled: “Life is like a box of …” One student had just returned from his uncle’s funeral. He wrote, “Life is like a box of tears, happy and sad.” Another student wrote, “Life is like a box of cupcakes, sweet and special.” We ate the rest of the chocolates and then I glued brown pom-poms and a school picture of each of my students in the empty spaces within the box. This went in the middle of our board.