To promote the great idea of bucket filling in our class, each student is given his or her own real bucket. The buckets are kept in a hanging shoe rack that we cut in half and attach to a cupboard in the back of our classroom. Small, multi-colored pom-poms are stored in the top pockets of the shoe rack. When a student fills a classmate's invisible bucket, both the bucket filler and the person whose bucket was filled get to add a pom-pom to their buckets. (Remember, when a student fills a classmate's bucket, he or she is also filling his or her own invisible bucket because it feels good to make others happy.)

This activity is an honor system, so students do not need to report to the teacher every time they fill a bucket. The two students simply visit the bucket-filling shoe rack and add their pom-poms at an appropriate time during the school day. If we do have some extra time in the day, I will ask students to share their bucket-filling stories with their classmates as a way of building community in our classroom.