Learning about and practising kindness

Strength Practising

In Autahi we have been spending some time unpacking the strength of kindness and thinking about ways in which we can show kindness.  Like anything else, we need to practise strengths.  We can also start to spot strengths in others once we know what that strength looks like.  

We read the book Have You Filled a Bucket Today.  This book describes everyone as having an invisible bucket that you can either dip into or fill up.  When we do things for other people we fill up their buckets and that, in return, usually fills up our own as well.  Then we got thinking about ways we can fill others' buckets.  We created our own poster illustrating those ways.  

"When new kids start I can say, wanna play with me? They will say ok!"

"Even if someone is mean, you just smile at them and eventually they will smile back!"

After creating our poster and coming up with our ideas.  We decided to do some Random Acts of Kindness.  We each picked a name of a classmate out of a hat and then we made that person a fruit skewer.   

At the end of the day we exchanged our gifts and practised saying something nice.  Many of us said, "Thank you for being my classmate!" In this act we were working within the Positive Purpose domain of Positive Education in which we were thinking about someone other than ourself and doing something nice for that person.  We filled each other's buckets with kind words and a nice fruity treat at the end of the day.  Doing something nice for someone else, filled our own bucket too. 

Now we are working on continuing to practise kindness and notice and be grateful for kindness we see in others.  Can you try and spot kindness? Tell the person when you see it!