Random Acts of Kindness

This year, one of my big goals is to improve relations between my students...no more snipping or snapping...voluntarily helping each other...generally just treating each other with kindness!  So when I heard the governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, declared August 22nd Random Act of Kindness Day, I decided to jump on board!  We were going to rock the school with RAKs!
 
First, it just so happened we were working on building the ideas section of our writer's notebook, and we were focusing on things that make us happy. To inspire some happy ideas, I read my writers the book, Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed by Emily Pearson.

This is a charming little book about a little girl who's simple deep of picking blueberries and giving them to her neighbor inspires a chain of kindness throughout her community and the world!  Well my ulterior motive in reading this book was to get my students on board with the RAK idea...and it worked!  They were set to go!

 

So, a couple of days before August 22, I brought each student in a little treat.  Attached to the treat I put this tag...



 

We also decided to start a chain to see how our kindness was growing using these strips...

 

Then, on August 22nd, we went on a RAK spree.  First we had to invite the other 4th grade classes to join in...

 

The other fourth graders were really excited to do nice things for others!  And so our chain of kindness grew...

 

Then we passed out some treats to staff members around campus...

(A little pack of drink mix attached to a bottle of water)

And our chain grew...

 

We decided to do some secret RAKs too...like placing nickels as a treat for other students to find.  My students were so cute as secret RAK spies!  Some even tried to "stake out" the spot where they "hid" their nickel to see when it would be found.  Here are some places...

on top of a girl's bathroom sign...

a bulletin board cork strip...

on top of the security "laser"-thing-y...

the handle of the fire extinguisher case.

 

We are very excited about how long our chain has gotten...

A secret RAKer even returned our Random Act of Kindness by purchasing the whole class ice cream from the school ice cream cart...that surprise definitely hammered home to my students how when you do good things for others that good things happen to you!  (RANDOMNESS...remember that Jason Lee show, My Name is Earl????)

 

We are working on September's Random Act of Kindness...we designed bookmarks and are hiding them in books in our media center.  It touched my heart when one of my students said she was putting hers in her favorite book so another student can enjoy that book as much as she did!