Bucket-Filling Lessons

Now that I've been around to introduce myself to all classrooms, it is time to start our regular rotation of "Life Skills" lessons! Over the next 5 weeks, I will be teaching one lesson in each classroom. I'll start with 2nd graders this week, and work my way through 1st grade and kindergarten in the weeks to come.

The first lesson is about.... buckets! Buckets? Yes, buckets. We are reading the book Have You Filled A Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud. The basic idea is that everyone in the world has an invisible bucket, and our buckets hold our good thoughts and good feelings about ourselves. When we talk about "filling people's buckets," we mean saying and doing things to help others feel special, important, and loved. Bucket-dipping is the opposite: saying and doing unkind things that make others feel un-special or unimportant. The lessons will encourage students to think of ways that they can be bucket-fillers for classmates, parents, siblings, teachers, and other people in their lives. The bucket-filling concept is a great tool for friendship and social skills development, and it also ties in with our state's character education initiatives, particularly the traits of kindness, compassion, and caring.

As part of the lesson, many students will be assigned a "secret mission." They will draw the name of a classmate from a bucket, and it will be their job to put their learning into action by filling that person's bucket for several days. If your child comes home talking about his or her "secret mission," please know that this is not in any way a monetary activity! Simply smiling, saying kind words, giving compliments, offering an invitation to play, or helping the person at school are perfect ways to carry out a "secret mission." No gifts or treats are expected or necessary!

From September 27th through the October 1st, the whole school will celebrate Bucket-Filling Week. I will send home a page of two buckets with each student, and they will be asked to make a special effort to say and do caring things for the week. Students and family members can document their kind deeds on the paper buckets, then bring them back to school. We will hang them in the hallways so everyone can take note of our caring acts!

Lastly, if you did not receive the brochure, half-page parent note, and full-page sign up form for the counseling program's email and backpack mail lists, please let me know! These were distributed over the first two weeks of school when I visited each classroom to introduce myself. If I missed you somehow, I'd be happy to send them home with your child.