If you are looking for a book to teach your kids about kindness, look no further, for this is it! You can find the copy on Amazon. The book talks about two types of people – bucket filters and bucket dippers. The concept of the book is, everyone we meet have an imaginary bucket and we have a bucket too. When we are kind to others, we fill each other’s buckets. But everytime we are unkind, we slowly empty each other’s buckets. I loved how this book made kindness more practical to teach kids of all ages.
For my toddler who is 2.5 yrs old, I wanted to create an activity through which he can understand the meaning to kindness and what it means to hurt other’s feelings. J loves sticky wall activities and I decided to use that as the medium for the activity.
ACTIVITY SETUP
- Contact paper
- Acts of kindness/bullying printouts. I complied mine from Goode images, you can download my file here.
- Buckets and stars printouts. I found these cute printouts from Tiny Graphics store. You can find their free resource here. You can always make and print your own buckets and stars.
I laminated everything I printed. Put up the contact paper and you can use masking tape to secure it. Stick the 2 buckets onto the contact paper as shown. I added some stars to each bucket to start with. Designate a place where you can stick an act of kindness / bullying, somewhere in the middle. In the picture below the act of kindness is shown where a little girl is helping a boy who is hurt.
BUCKET FILLER – ACT OF KINDNESS
In the book, bucket filters are those who does kindness to others. Whenever one shows an act of kindness towards others, they fill other’s bucket and also their own. I explain to J that if he is kind, both him and the friend he helps will be happy in the end.
In the activity, Whenever an act of kindness is stuck on the sticky wall, J will add stars to both buckets as shown below.
BUCKET DIPPER – BULLYING / ACTING OUT
When someone is a bully or if they make others sad by their actions, they are called bucket dippers in the book. When you are a bucket dipper you empty others buckets and also your own. You can explain to your toddler that when they are making someone sad, they themselves become sad as well.
In the activity, if an act of bullying / acting out is at the center of the sticky wall, J will take out one star from both the buckets and drop it to the ground.
We repeated this activity with lots of scenarios, so J could see more examples of kindness. This was such a great activity to teach my toddler the meaning of kindness and what it really means to not to be kind. I pray and hope J grows to be a kind man who fills lots of buckets along the way.
