Compassion

December is a very exciting time of year with the excitement of the different holidays taking place, the change of seasons, the joy of lights and the winter break around the corner.  With the excitement also comes the ups and downs of the all the emotions from students and ourselves.  Offering alternative activities in conjunction with the regular work cycle can help to build compassion and kindness among the students as well as help to settle the air of heightened emotions.

Some ideas of compassion and kindness for the classroom are:

• • Talking toothpaste activity:
    • This kindness object lesson with toothpaste is a visual demonstration on how important it is for us to use kind words.  There is the saying, “Stick and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
    • This lesson can help kids to understand the gravity of their words and therefore learn to speak with kindness.

Get a tube of toothpaste for your kids.

• • • Talk about the importance of words.  I talked about how you can say something, but once it’s heard the bad effects have already started to take place. Talk about what nice words look like and how they make us feel.  Talk about how mean words might make us feel. By talking about how how they would feel, we can get to their hearts rather than just their behavior.
    • Next, tell them to start squeezing the toothpaste out of the tube. Squirt it onto a cutting board.
    • The next part of the activity was to have them try to put it back in.  Give them toothpicks to help.
    • Talk about how the toothpaste represent words that come out of our mouth. Once your words come out of our mouth, you cannot stop what has been heard, and it can have really hurtful effects on the people around you.  You can ask for forgiveness, but those words can still have a lot of weight on people.
    • Conclude by coming up with nice words.
• Play Emotion Games- helping them understand emotions.
• Role Play
• Make an “I Will …” board- haves students write statements for their family, friends or school about and act of kindness that they will do.
• Make “I will statements”- I will use uplifting words.
• Practice random acts of kindness.
• Make a kindness jar.
• Pick a Charity for the class to be apart of to participate in the second half of the year
• Try modified activities for children to experience the lives of others- paint with their feet, their mouths, explore braille- connect these activities real stories of people- show pictures.
• Collect clothes, toys, books and do a class service project
• Write letters for the elderly at the local nursing home