If you’ve subscribed to Tales from a Very Busy Teacher, then you’ve been receiving my monthly kindness calendars. Every month, a new calendar is sent straight to your inbox in hopes that you challenge your students to participate in an act of kindness each day.
In addition to sharing the daily act of kindness, here are five other ideas on how you can share this calendar with your students.
Daily Challenge Board
When I first started using my kindness calendar in my classroom, I would simply write the kindness challenge for the day on the board. I would sometimes forget to erase it or acknowledge it consistently throughout the day. I wanted to be more intentional about sharing the daily kindness challenge, so I created this bulletin board set. It has all of the daily kindness challenges written out. All you have to do is change it on the bulletin board. You can also have students use post-it notes to write down times when they’ve seen people completing that particular act of kindness. It would be a great way to get students engaged and make the board interactive. You can even share the post-it notes with students at the end of the during a closing meeting with your class. You can find the bulletin board here.
Kindness Raffle Box (Catch Someone Being Kind)
Another option to recognize students showing kindness is to create a kindness raffle box. When students see someone being kind, they can use these little notecards to write what they saw. Students place them into the kindness raffle box (that you can make out of anything) and then you can hold a raffle at the end of the day. Here are some fun and inexpensive raffle prizes from Amazon that I use!
You can grab these “Caught Being Kind” tickets for free right here. I also have a label for a “Caught Being Kind” box that you can grab here for free too.
Kindness Quote Board
Use the kindness calendar in conjunction with these kindness quote posters! Display these posters all year long or display them as they correspond with each monthly calendar. They can even be a part of your daily kindness challenge bulletin board display.
Displaying these posters for the entire school year is also a great option. You can find the posters here!
Communication with Families
Make the monthly kindness calendars a part of communication with your students’ families. Send it home with your regular newsletters or as a separate monthly email. Encourage families to practice the acts of kindness at home, on weekends, and to share with others. Ask parents and families to engage in conversations about how their children showed kindness while in school and how it’s connected to the monthly calendar.
Kindness Lessons
Integrate kindness lessons that revolve around the daily or weekly challenge. Utilize speaking and listening standards to help students communicate with each other about their kindness goals and how they’ll show kindness daily.
You can also use my kindness lessons. I have so many videos and ideas in my kindness blog post and in this Instagram story highlight.
Don’t forget to check out my in-person and digital kindness lessons.
Make the connection between the lessons and daily challenges as you teach them!
The monthly kindness calendar can help you to support your students in being intentional with kindness each day. If you haven’t yet subscribed, don’t forget to do that here!