In the very basic sense, helping young children understand gratitude, begins with teaching them to say thank you. Unfortunately, these two little words don’t show up as often as I would like. Each year, I’m made aware, when this happens… I’m handing out papers and the first 15 kiddos take the paper without saying anything […]
5 Teamwork Activities for Your Kindergarten Classroom
Inside: Teamwork is an important concept for kindergarten and beyond. In this post, I share 5 teamwork activities that you can use to help children learn how to collaborate and work together. And before you go, be sure to download your free Community Building Toolkit found at the bottom of this post. Teamwork Activities For Kindergarten […]
Daily Intention and Reflection
Looking for a way to build intention and reflection into your day? Try taking a page out of Ben Franklin’s book! He began each day with a morning question: And ended with an evening question: You might ask children to quietly visualize themselves “doing good” or invite them to turn and talk with a friend […]
Christmas Kindness Countdown Calendar
It’s so easy to find yourself at the end of December asking, “What did we actually accomplish this month?” So this year, I decided to be a bit more intentional about the holiday hullabaloo and created a Holiday Kindness Countdown Calendar that would encourage kindness and a season of giving. Preparing for the Countdown During […]
Positivity Project: Open-mindedness
I went into this week unsure of how I might introduce this character strength to kinders, but was pleasantly surprised at how quickly they grasped it, especially as it relates to trying new things. We began by listening to Green Eggs and Ham and the children named foods they have been “close-minded” about. One little […]
Positivity Project: Curiosity
The first character strength introduced with the Positivity Project is curiosity. This was a great one to begin the year because it provided opportunities for us to explore children’s interests and model a curious disposition (I wonder…) from the get go! While “wondering aloud” can be done with any read aloud, here are some […]
Other People Matter Mindset
This year our school became a Positivity Project partner school. We are hard at work to bring about positive change in our school culture by infusing this mindset into all parts of our school day! We began by introducing the motto, Other People Matter. I told the children that these were important words to carry […]
Encouraging Positive Talk in Kindergarten
Our school year got off to a “positive” start as we introduced the Positivity Project emblem that we now proudly display as one of their partner schools! As we looked closely at the symbol, I quickly realized I would need to help the children understand what the word “positive” meant. We were reading The Little Engine […]
