Let's Talk KINDNESS!

Let's talk KINDNESS...this has been a big topic of discussion these last few weeks! We have been struggling more since coming back from Spring Break with being kind in the classroom, on the playground and in the lunchroom to both students as well as adults and so this week we really focused on what it means to be kind. We talked about what kindness is, what it looks like, how it feels when others are kind to us as well as what it feels like when we are kind to others and how we can show kindness to everyone.

Monday began with a lesson about how our actions affect other people. For this we learned about "wrinkled hearts." Each kiddo came around and made a circle in the group area. One at a time, they took turns telling when someone wasn’t kind to them. As they told their story, they were then able to wrinkle the heart. After all students had a chance to tell their story I tried to smooth out the wrinkles. The class could see that no matter what you try… the wrinkles remain! This helped the kids to understand that unkind words can never truly be “erased”. Often times kids think a “sorry” makes everything all better. We want them to take responsibility for their mistakes and apologize… but stopping to think before actually making the mistake is even better!

The Ripple Effect, was the next activity! For this activity we gathered around a bucket of water, each with a marble in hand! For this activity, the students stated something KIND they did for someone.

As they threw the marble into the bucket they watched to see the “ripple” the marble made! This ripple is the same in real life. When you do something nice for someone they feel loved and will do something kind as well. This ripple continues on and on!

In addition, we added time into our day to watch this great video which reminded us to be kind!

We began our Tuesday with this video about kindness:

Additionally, on Tuesday we switched up our table teams and so we spent time in the morning doing some team building activities. It is so important to build and maintain positive relationships with one another throughout the year. We did this on Tuesday by spending some time collaboratively creating special team hand shakes. Each of the kids were able to give ideas as to what moves should be included and they collectively put them together into a fun handshake. They had opportunities throughout the day to practice them and then shared them with the class in the afternoon. They had a blast, all while finding successful ways to work with others all while developing/practicing kindness along the way!

We took time in the morning on Wednesday to watch this fun video/song which also helped to get our wiggles our while thinking about how being kind is like a muscle in our body.

We talked about how the more we exercise, the stronger our muscles become. This is the same for kindness. The more we show acts of kindness, the better we feel and the better others around us feel and the kindness will continue....remember that ripple effect?!

Next, we listened to a book about kindness called What Does it Mean to be Kind? and then spent time writing about ways that we can each show kindness to others.

I loved reading about the different, specific examples of how each friend would show kindness on that day! We are really working at being intentional!

As I have been noticing students showing acts of kindness throughout the day, they have been able to add their name to pieces of confetti on our wall. We have adapted the theme in our room to Throw Kindness Like Confetti - meaning, when you show kindness to others, it can spread and spread...there is that ripple again!

Friends have been so eager to not only write their own names on the board but have truly shown excitement for their classmates when they have gotten to write their names on as well. It is so encouraging to have kiddos come up to me and recognize their peers for being kind!

We began our Thursday morning in Library. When we returned to class, we had another video about kindness to watch. This was followed by learning about some fun we had planned for the afternoon. We have not gotten together with our fourth grade reading buddies in a little while and so Mrs. Simons and I both thought it was time to have some fun together.

We decided that in light of our overlaying theme of kindness this week, we had better do something nice for our buddies. We made sure to take time and decorate each of our buddies a bookmark and included a kind message on the back for them as well! We delivered our gifts to them in the afternoon while we watched the Velveteen Rabbit with them!

Our final day of the week focusing on kindness began with the following video:

Some of the videos we have watched this week have been met by giggles and laughter, however we talk about how they have a very important message attached to each one.

Finally, on Friday we spent Genius Hour making videos on Seesaw about specific ways that we showed kindness to others this week. Make sure to log on to your child's seesaw account from home over the weekend to check out their kindness videos!