When it comes to creating a truly caring classroom, showing your students just what it means to be kind and compassionate to one another is your best tool. You’ll not only inspire them to respect others and express gratitude for friends, family, teachers, and loved ones inside and outside of school, you’ll also help them keep their buckets filled to the brim!

Plus, check out these essential teacher resources to inspire kindness in your classroom.

For your students’ collective buckets to fill, modelling the kindness, compassion, and gratitude you want to see in your classroom each day is just the first step.

By incorporating read-alouds, fun games, and hands-on activities, you’ll help your students see the positive impact kindness will make in their lives and the lives of their classmates. Here are three bucket-filling books and activities to help you create a caring classroom and inspire the kindness, compassion, and gratitude you want to see from your students.

How Full Is Your Bucket? For Kids + Classroom Bucket Bulletin Board

This inspiring, bucket-filling tale is one you’ll likely return to over and over throughout the year to remind kids just what it takes to keep their buckets filled and how to respond with compassion to one another’s feelings. While this story is centered around an invisible bucket, consider creating your own collective classroom bucket for you and your students to fill throughout the year, and then meet weekly to reflect upon what it takes as a class to keep that bucket filled.

Whether you use a bulletin board bucket display where students can describe the kind acts they experience — and return to for more bucket-filling inspiration — or use a real, decorated bucket where students can drop notes of gratitude, giving your students the tools to acknowledge and reflect on the kindness, compassion, and gratitude that are now the hallmark of your classroom is an important exercise. 

Bucket Filling From A to Z ­+ Student-Generated Kindness Tips

In this A to Z rhyming book, your students will realize just how simple being kind to one another really is. They’ll also learn how to protect their buckets and why they don’t want to be a person who dips into the buckets of others — but most importantly, they’ll discover important bucket-filling tips to make your classroom even more kind and caring!

Bucket Filling From A to Z is also a great book to help encourage students to brainstorm their own bucket-filling tips they can share with others. By now, your kids know just what it takes to keep their buckets filled and maybe even overflowing. Though respecting others and expressing gratitude are now second nature, it’s also important for your students to reflect on their own bucket-filling experience and take it to the next level by sharing their story with others.

Each week, encourage your kids to work individually or in small groups to generate their own kindness tips they can share with one another, their friends, and their family. This will help them reflect on their own bucket-filling journey and inspire others to follow the same path.

How Full Is Your Bucket? Young Reader’s Edition + Kindness Writing Challenge

For upper elementary students, How Full Is Your Bucket? Young Reader’s Edition will be a great reminder on how being thoughtful and generous to one another can make a big difference in their classroom and community. Featuring innovative tips that students can use inside and outside the classroom, this book is also a great way to kick off a daily kindness writing challenge.

Whether it’s three days or 30 days, this writing challenge will inspire students to reflect on kindness, compassion, gratitude, and more, and help students get in the healthy habit of journaling. Here are three kindness writing prompts to help get you started:

Describe how it makes you feel when a classmate does something nice for you.

How does it make you feel when you perform a kind act for a classmate.

How can you motivate others to engage in kind acts in your classroom and community?

Bucket-filling is not only an effective strategy for creating a caring classroom, it’s also a fun way to inspire students to be kind to one another. For more bucket-filling books and activities to inspire kindness in your classroom, check out these five must-reads from Scholastic.  

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