This activity is for all of those dedicated teachers and parents who live to teach kids kindness in a creative, fun, and out-of-the-box way. I’ve tried to design this lesson and page so that you’ll find resources that will help you introduce the activity with as little prep as possible for your students (or your own kiddos)! I found and adapted this lesson from melissaanddoug.com and livecrafteat.com:
Things that you require to get started:
How I would teach this in the classroom:
- This is a fabulous first lesson to launch the 21-Day Small Act Big Impact Challenge in the classroom! Show the students the launch video or have Morgane come and launch the program through a presentation with your students. Students will be keen to start the challenge and this lesson will be a perfect way to make it fun and engaging!
- Place all of the envelopes, labelled with the students’ names on their desks. After lunch or first-thing in the morning is the perfect time for the introduction to this activity. This might be something you dedicate an entire morning or afternoon to. Or, you may wish to spread this out throughout the 21-Days, giving students a new mission every day. There is some reading involved, so if you are choosing to do this in the primary grades, it might be fun to work with buddy classes to complete the missions.
- Instruct the students to open their envelopes and follow the directions to read through the mini daily missions and choose the activities they would like to do that day. This is where your knowledge of your own class and their abilities will come in handy. If you have an older class, this might be a great advisory activity to do. They can complete each mission independently and check back each day. With Elementary School, you may want give students time to plan for, create, and follow through with their mission during centre time or as a rotating station during structured instructional time. You may (especially for K-2) want to do each mission together as a class. This would tie-in well to the Kindness Capes Lesson for Kindergarten and Grade One. For any class, I would suggest choosing a few of the missions as combined whole-group missions that will build a sense of trust and team within your class.
- Children will be allowed to cut out their selected mission and paste it onto their letters.
- Some of the missions include: Making cards for people to brighten their days, saying “thank you” to the administration/admin assistants, bringing coffee to people, offering help, cleaning up trash, sorting the recycling, and smiling at people.
- Please share some of the adaptations or kind acts that made a difference within your classroom or home. It’s wonderful to get inspiration from other teachers! Share on twitter @SABI21days, Facebook, on Instagram @smallactbigimpact21days, in the comments below, or via email smallactbigimpact21days@gmail.com
Leave a comment below to share how you used and adapted this lesson for your classroom! I always get inspired by people’s stories and the things they do. You might just inspire someone today!
Find us on Twitter @SABI21days, FACEBOOK@smallactbigimpact21days, and INSTAGRAM @smallactbigimpact21days or via email
Feel free to check out the rest of my website for my blog, additional tangible challenge ideas, journal template, videos-links, bios to cool people who influenced the challenge with their ideas, and the science behind the SABI challenge (peer-reviewed journal articles linked).
Morgane Michael 