About Me

I am a K-6 school counselor. I truly love my job and try to use my time wisely to teach important life lessons! I started this blog to share the ideas that I have obtained from others and have created to continue inspiring and keeping our students interested.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Character Trait: Kindness...Bucket Fillers


This is probably my favorite lesson to teacher.  I love bucket fillers because the concept explains how to be kind in a concrete way.  Every student loves the bucket filler lesson.  Even when I think that the 5th or 6th will be bored with it, or "I've heard it before" I always get at least 5-6 yesss!!'s or smiles when doing it.  I have attached my lessons for all grades with the ASCA standards.  I am also attaching the worksheets I used with the different grades.

In each classroom, I brought a bucket with different colored beads.  I told the students these were their power beads, which gave them the power to fill someone's bucket.  We went around the classroom and allowed each student to fill someone's bucket.  It's a great self esteem booster and who doesn't love to be called out in a positive way?!

This is the worksheet I used with the k-2 students
This is the worksheet for 3-4
This is the worksheet for 5-6

And here are the lesson plans with ASCA standards!

K-2
3-6

Friday, March 29, 2013

Acts of Kindness Week


I have been so busy, but now I have so much to write about!  We celebrated Acts of Kindness Week a couple of weeks ago.  It was a cute week, and we did little things throughout the week to encourage, educate, and promote acts of kindness, as they are so easy and make such an impact!

I have attached the week's agenda, which I blew up and spread throughout the school.

On Monday, we had an assembly to review the activities, and kick off the Pennies for Patients fundraiser.  I showed a video about Pennies for patients to the students so they have a better understanding of the importance of the foundation.

I used bingo cards as a way for students to have a friendly contest to do a kind act.  The adults were also given this.

We also watched a bucket filler video to further explain bucket fillers as I hadn't gotten to all the classrooms for my monthly guidance lesson, which was Kindness; Bucket Fillers.  This video was really cute, and showed the "magic" of bucket filling.  I showed a different video to the 5th and 6th grade students.

We finished up with a video of the school staff telling an Act of Kindness story.  The staff had so many great examples, and I think it was good for the students to see us as human beings just like them!  I had about 15 staff members provide stories.

Starting on Wednesday until the end of the week, students and staff had the opportunity to purchase Kindness grams to send to someone at school or home.  We sold a decent amount, and I had so much fun delivering the grams and seeing the smiles on so many faces.  There were some great kindness grams, and one in particular stuck with me.  A student wrote "Thanks for keeping me out of trouble" and "thanks for helping me when I'm angry." That's what we as educators need to hear to keep us motivated and feel the impact of our work.

A big thank you to a special lady in my life who printed all of the kindness grams for our school :)

On Friday, I had teachers send two students that exhibit acts of kindness to me.  They wrote a kind act on a heart and then pinned it on the Grinch, which is hanging in our hallway.  Of course, a pinterest idea! Here is a picture.





 Here are the links to the videos.


bucket filler postcard

Pennies for Patients

5th and 6th bucket filler video

k-4 bucket filler video