The Great Kindness Challenge

Happy Saturday. Today I'm excited because the Kids For Peace

Great Kindness Challenge is just around the corner.

Is your school ready to focus your efforts on being kind,

on purpose, with intention?

To one another and to ourselves.

At home, in school, in our community, in our world.

And not just for a week, but for a lifetime,

until kindness becomes a habit.

Start by sharing the Cindy McKinley book One Voice to show

what happens when one kind act ripples out and boomerangs back.

Follow that up with Kindness BINGO, an idea I first saw {here}.

Here's how my version of this activity would work:

Brainstorm at least 30 kind acts that your students could commit to doing this week. Remind them that it doesn't have to be huge to be kind!

Make an anchor chart listing all of their suggestions.

{You'll need this list if you want to play BINGO on Friday.}

From that list, have students fill in this KIND Card with the 24 things that they'd be willing to do this week, to sprinkle their world with kindness.

Students can track their acts of kindness throughout the week by highlighting the squares as they complete them.

Click graphic to download.

During the week, encourage one another by checking in at morning meeting to share how many kind acts each student has done and how many they have left to do. Does anyone else hear some mathematical equation integration?

Up the ante with a little incentive to see who can finish by Wednesday, for example. Let those students buddy up with other classmates to cheer them on and help them complete the challenge. Track and chart the class' kind acts with a tally, a bar graph, or a circle graphic organizer. Post it loud and proud outside your classroom to create a kindness synergy! Then, on Friday afternoon, play a celebratory game of BINGO using your completed KIND Cards.

{The only prep will be cutting up that list of suggestions for the caller to use instead of numbers and gathering something to use for markers.} I can just feel the warmth.

How will your school be celebrating kindness this week?

My friend Natalie sent me this picture;