At monday morning meeting, Mr. Liner reminded us that compassion is an VERB, it's an action we take. Through many different read alouds we have noticed that when we do compassionate things, it creates a "ripple effect." Kid president says, "One person is filled with love and then they have to live it out so they do something awesome then the next person is filled with love and they do something awesome. It just goes on and on and on. They next thing you know, the whole world is awesome!" Such a great message and way to build community of AWESOME at QAE. Thanks again climate commitee for keeping up with our monthly themes :) | |
When I think about compassion, I can't help but think about the book, "Have you filled a bucket today." Many of us know this book, our kids may have done activities around this book, and we have even already read this book in class. But, our class came alive with act of compassion on Friday through the story of this book. I read the story aloud again earlier in the week and we decided to start taking action and being bucket fillers all week long! We came up with ideas for what we could do to fill each other's buckets. We came up with: - giving compliments - smiling - hugging - asking friends to play - giving "thank you" notes - solving problems with friends. Every time we filled someones bucket, we put a sticker on our class bucket filler chart. For the whole week, we watched our stickers grow and watched how it changed the way we felt about ourselves and each other! |
This theme of compassion fits perfectly with valentines day! Throughout the week we have talked about the big upcoming day. Kids were excitedly sharing all about the valentines they were making and, of course, talking about the class party! When we stopped and thought about what we were really celebrating, we came up with "Compassion," our word of the month.
This Valentine's Day, we continued to take action! What acts of compassion can we do to help build a stronger classroom community? We decided to spend a chunk of time filling everyone's "buckets." We wrote notes to each other that told them how they were going to fill their bucket,
Once the process of sharing notes started, I couldn't stop it. Kids were racing around the room delivering while I was rushing to the copy machine to make more notes! The kids got to physically see their bucket being filled by their peers. It was magic. At the end of our time, we held our buckets and talked about how that process made us feel, how connected we felt with each other, and how we had to remember that these buckets are with us and our peers everyday. Acts of compassion are not just for Valentine's Day, but everyday :)
Once the process of sharing notes started, I couldn't stop it. Kids were racing around the room delivering while I was rushing to the copy machine to make more notes! The kids got to physically see their bucket being filled by their peers. It was magic. At the end of our time, we held our buckets and talked about how that process made us feel, how connected we felt with each other, and how we had to remember that these buckets are with us and our peers everyday. Acts of compassion are not just for Valentine's Day, but everyday :)