The Great Kindness Challenge- Week Highlights

My school participated in The Great Kindness Challenge last week.  We had a week full of school wide kindness activities and of course each classroom is doing kindness focused lessons, also.  Here are some of the highlights of the week in my classroom.

Each day of Kindness Week had a theme, think dress-up days. Kinder teachers are made for dress-up days!  Monday started off the week with "team spirit" day where we were encouraged to wear sports or dance team clothes.  Considering that I have to borrow a shirt for every sports team spirit day I decided to re-work the 'team' in team spirit.  I give you, KINDergarten Team, complete with our names on the back... in glitter (nothing is really 'complete' in Kindergarten until you add the glitter!)

One of my favorite whole school activities was the door decorating "contest" (everyone won in the end).  We had a great time decorating our door and even more fun going on a tour around the school to check out the other doors. My door was already covered in snowflakes and will need to be redecorated for Valentine's day and the 100th day so I went for the minimalist approach.  We also expanded our door decorations to include a portion of the wall (part of my master plan to be able to decorate for the 100th day and not have to be, "that person" who took down the Kindness Week decor the day after). Our "Flurry of Kindness" was made by asking students to pick the one word that was the most important in their idea of "how to be kind."  Once a word was selected, the word was written by an adult in Sharpie and then written (and written, and written) by the Kinder using rainbow writing.

We even made the local paper with our all school heart photo! It's "KIND" of awesome.

Check out my original Great Kindness Challenge post for more information/ideas.

Keep up the kindness!

The Great Kindness Challenge

This week I won't be teaching Kindergarten.  This week I'll be teaching KINDergarten.

January 23-27, 2017 my school will be participating in The Great Kindness Challenge. Check out the event website- it's loaded with activities and resources!  Each day this week has a different kindness theme, complete with wardrobe options to match (we all know Kinder teachers are great at dressing up- it's basically an unofficial requirement for this grade level).

I was a fan when I heard of the idea of a week devoted to Kindness.  After checking into the program I discovered that one of the bigger sponsors is Peaceable Kingdom.  Peaceable Kingdom is my favorite company for the cooperative games.  Check them out here!  The games are age appropriate and entertaining.  The games are also made from recycled materials and parts are replaceable (just call the company- they are super helpful and 'get' the mystery of where game pieces disappear to within classroom walls.)  I reviewed the company a few years ago, I still think they're fabulous!

I don't have too many exact plans worked out, yet (the inspiration moments that happen in the shower or on the way to school haven't hit yet).  Here are the two ideas I have plotted out on my particularly blank plan book for next week.

• One of my lessons is going to be to make a Kindness Quilt (out of paper).  We'll be reading the book The Kindness Quilt and making our own quilt as a class. When I was in Kindergarten my teacher had an annual family project where each Kinder's family decorated a fabric square which was sewn into an actual quilt.  I have always wanted to bring that project back and feel that this paper quilt may eventually become my version.  For now, this is an in-school project.  

• We're also participating in a door decorating contest (school wide) where our classroom door will be transformed from sparkly snowflakes to a, "flurry of kindness."  (Taking down all of the snowflakes to put them back up in a week just isn't a good use of any of my prep blocks- this would be an example of 'working with what you've got').

So what will you be teaching?  Ready for the challenge to teach KINDergarten? You've got this!