I’m so excited to share with you my favorite ideas for Kindness Week… get ready to do a Week of Kindness in your classroom!

Kindness Week Activities

If you're ready to get started with spreading kindness in the classroom, then a week of kindness is the best way to do it. There are lots of ways to structure a week of kindness so don't get overwhelmed! Sprinkling in a small kindness activity each day — such as a craft, a book, or an anchor chart — can be a great place to get started. And there are so many fun choices for week of kindness activities, you can choose the kindness activities that call out to you.

Let's start with some whole-class activities that will get all your students involved! These are fun, engaging ideas you can weave into your class plans all week long to keep your students excited about kindness week.

Kindness Bingo

Kindness bingo is one of my favorite ideas for kindness week. It is a great opportunity to give students concrete examples, and then spur them into action to try some out! Encourage students to notice when someone else does something on the bingo board. At a certain time of day, students can share what they noticed and you can color squares in on the chart – then sit back and see how many class bingos your students can get during the week!

Kindness Paper Chain

A Kindness Paper Chain is another fun kindness activity to encourage kindness in the whole class. I tell the students that every time they see someone being kind, we can add a link to our chain. At the end of the week, we’ll count up the links and they’ll be counted as gems for our gem jar! They are so excited to see how long they can get it, and it’s a huge source of excitement.

It's fun to have students share what they've noticed (and of course you can share acts of kindness you've noticed as well!) at a certain time of day, so you can add the links together as a class. Then stretch it out at the end of every day to see how long it’s gotten!

A Good Friend

Discussing how to be a good friend is another great activity for a week of kindness. Invite students to come up with things a good friend does and doesn't do. (Pro tip – this exercise can be pulled out later in the year to refer back to whenever friendship troubles start up!)

Kindness Week Crafts

Bringing the arts into the classroom is one of my passions – so of course I’ve got some super fun artsy kindness week activities elementary students will love! Crafts will also help students think independently about the kindness ideas you're discussing together during your kindness week.

Kindness Crowns

These kindness crowns are a great kindness craft to do with your class to kick off kindness week. I love that these crowns help students think about how they want to be kind and to set a goal for it. These are also super simple, just color, cut, and staple. I'm all about crafts that are low-prep for teachers – we have so much going on!

Student Notes

These student notes will spread so much happiness and friendship in your classroom! Invite students to write kind notes to one another. You can have them set up little mailboxes for one another, or you can be the deliverer. (I like to deliver them just so I can double check the contents before the receiver gets their note.) Students will love giving these kindness notes just as much as they love receiving them!

If you're worried about everyone receiving one, secretly ask a student or two to write notes to specific people for you. Students will love being asked to be special helpers, and this ensures everyone is getting a positive note from a classmate.

Be A Bucket Filler

Have You Filled A Bucket Today? and its sequel, How Full Is Your Bucket? For Kids, provide such a clear visual for how our words and actions affect others. I love that these books emphasize that our own happiness increases when we make others happy! You can pair these books with this fun craft activity for your class. Students brainstorm what actions would fill other people's buckets!

How To Be a Good Friend

This craft is a great way to encourage students to think independently about specific ways they can be a good friend to their classmates. Flipbooks are such a fun craft, so of course I wanted to throw one into our Week of Kindness plans!

Week of Kindness Books

There are so many great book ideas for kindness week. I like to do a lot of talk and modeling around the words “inclusive”, “accepting”, and “friendly”, and we talked about how they’re all parts of being kind. Especially during the first couple days of our week of kindness, I made sure to model, notice, and correct examples of these words in action. These children’s book helped me make these ideas more explicit, and helped guide deeper discussions about how empathy, inclusivity, and acceptance should play out in our classroom and at school.

Kindness Is My Superpower

A simple and relatable book that explains kindness in cute and understandable ways for children. After reading this book, you can create an anchor chart with your students to help them brainstorm ways they can be kind at school. A great one for your week of kindness.

Each Kindness

This haunting book brings home the power of our choices and their effects on others. Students empathize both with Maya as she is left out at her new school, and with Chloe’s feelings of guilt over excluding Maya. You can guide students through a discussion of what Chloe could have done differently, and what they should do if they see someone being excluded.

Spaghetti In A Hot Dog Bun

This book definitely helps students to explore empathy and choices. I love that you see the other side of the “bully”, allowing for discussions about how students labeled as “bullies” have feelings and struggles just like the rest of us. This book also offers the opportunity for a great discussion of how important it is to be yourself and to let others be different and true to themselves.

Tomorrow I'll Be Kind

This book teaches students different words that are positive attributes. These words — such as kind, generous, helpful — can be referred to throughout the school year as a helpful reminder for students of how you expect them to behave in class. You can also use this book to help students set a goal – tomorrow I will be ______, and have them choose one of the words.

When To Do Your Week of Kindness

What I love about doing a week of kindness is how genuinely excited the students get about spreading kindness and noticing acts of kindness. I find that having explicit conversations about how to treat one another and talk to one another is crucial to create behaviors that are helpful and positive. 

Kindness week activities are definitely popular during the month of February, as many schools have a Week of Kindness or Kindness Challenge around the time of Valentines' Day. But you can do them literally any time of the school year and see amazing benefits! Here are some ideas of when you can use them:

• During the first few weeks of the school year
• World Kindness Week in November
• When you come back from a long break
• Random Acts of Kindness Week in January
• Kindness Month in February
• Anytime your class needs a little extra dose of kindness!

I highly recommend doing a week of kindness when you come back from the summer or a break (or really anytime!). It’s a great way to spread some such good vibes and happy energy. 

You can also pick and choose from these ideas and sprinkle them in throughout the year, rather than dedicating doing a whole week of kindness activities. Revisiting what it means to be kind again and again is the key to making kindness a permanent part of your classroom culture.

Are you going to try a Week of Kindness in your classroom?
xoxo
Laura

You may also be interested in reading:

The Best Activities To Build Classroom Community To Try Now

5 Must-Try Classroom Routine and Procedures Ideas

21 Amazing Ideas for Activities on the First Day of School

10 Kindness Lessons and Activities for Elementary School

The post 11 Fantastic Week of Kindness Ideas To Try In Your Classroom appeared first on Love Grows Learning.

I have pulled together a list of some of my all-time favorite first week of school read alouds for starting off the year on the right foot, all organized by category. Some of these are brand new to me, and I am so excited to add them to my read aloud library this year!

First Week Of School Read Alouds

When you're choosing your first week of school read alouds, there are a few things to look for. If you want to choose read alouds to build classroom community, it can be helpful to look specifically for books that do one of the following:

• Help students feel welcome in their new classroom
• Build relationship between teacher and student
• Emphasize kindness and empathy
• Celebrate learning and help get students excited for school
• Teach rules and routines

First Day Of School Read Alouds

These first week of school children's books are a wonderful, clear statement that my classroom is a place where we love and support each other, and that everyone is a welcome part of this community.

Our Class Needs You is a wonderful back to school book that talks about how there is a place for every student in the classroom – whatever their talents or interests may be! It emphasizes that each student is not only welcome, but needed for the class to be complete.

A Tiger Tail is a fun book for the first day of school because it talks about feeling nervous on the first day of school, and how it's normal for everyone!

Our Class Is a Family is another great back to school book for creating classroom community. This book emphasizes that your class becomes your family during the school year, and that school is place where everyone is appreciated and safe.

All Are Welcome is the perfect first week of school read aloud for emphasizing inclusivity and celebrating diversity.

Read Alouds To Celebrate Names

Celebrating student names is always on my list for the first week of school activities! I love this set of first week of school read alouds because they normalize all types of names, and they focus on celebrating the beauty of every name.

The Name Jar is a classic book for helping students appreciate and embrace their own names.

Alma And How She Got Her Name is a sweet back to school read aloud that celebrates a name that is meaningful to Alma and her family.

Your Name Is A Song celebrates the beauty of various names. This is a wonderful first week of school read aloud, especially if you have students with names that are harder for you to pronounce.

Diversity and Inclusion

These first week of school books are helpful to talk about all the wonderful ways that we are all different from one another, and how our classroom will be a place to celebrate these differences. I use these books to start conversations about how we should be proud of all the parts that make us who we are, even if some of them are different from our classmates. We talk about how there is no “normal”, and how it's okay to talk about how we are different from others in a way that isn't hurtful. These books create wonderful opportunities for students to proudly talk about things they love about themselves.

Kindness And Justice

In my classroom, we always talk a lot the first month about how to treat each other. We set expectations, we do role playing, we create word lists, and we revisit them all the time. These books help my students understand on a deeper level the importance of treating each other with kindness, and the importance of speaking out when you see something wrong.

Classroom Behavior

And of course we also talk about classroom rules and behavior expectations. These books help to start conversations about what kinds of behaviors we need in order to learn. And reading these books together as a group helps us all feel united in our commitment to upholding our classroom rules.

Which first week of school read aloud are you excited to try this year?
xoxo
Laura

The post First Week of School Read Alouds Your Classroom Needs appeared first on Love Grows Learning.