“Our Favorite Day of the Year Buddy Project”
To promote school spirit, celebrate diversity, and build a sense of community at Valley View the
students council arranged a Buddy Project. For this Buddy Project, older students were paired
with younger students. The older students read Our Favorite Day of the Year by A. E. Ali. This
engaging book is about how despite differences, friendships can be formed and those
differences can be celebrated together. The student pairs then went off with their buddy and
worked collaboratively to make a quilt piece that highlighted their favorite day of the year. Those
pieces were shared with both classes. Finally, the pieces were collected and added to a school
quilt which was displayed proudly in the school media center. Not only did this activity promote
school spirit by helping to build a sense of community among different grades, but it also
allowed students to discover how diverse Valley View is.