Filling Up Our Buckets!

I'm sure you would agree with me that character education is an important part of raising children.  We all want our kids to grow up to be polite, caring people.  Of course, we teachers want that too!

This week, I started implementing a program called Bucket Fillers.  It is based on the popular book series by Carol McCloud.  First, we read this book:

Here's a summary for those of you who have not read it (and I highly recommend that you do!):

Everybody carries around an invisible bucket.  We can fill up other people's buckets by doing and saying nice things, but we can also dip from their buckets when we act in a mean way. 

Here is a YouTube video of the story:

We have two goals every day:  to fill up at least one person's bucket and to let someone know that they filled up our own bucket.

We have a bucket filler bulletin board in our classroom.  Every child has their own "bucket" hanging up.  I encourage the students to keep an eye out for nice things that their classmates say or do, and whenever they notice something, they can fill out a bucket slip thanking that person and put it in their bucket.  At the end of the week, I pass out all of the bucket slips for the children to read and take home.  After all, making others happy makes us happy, too!

I am also highlighting a different virtue every week.  This week's virtue was thankfulness.  The kids did a fantastic job of thanking each other for a variety of little things throughout the day.  I am so proud of them!  I really have such a class of sweethearts.  :)