Halloween Kindness Box

Whenever I think of Halloween I think of Jerry Seinfeld's "more candy, more candy" Halloween Book (and sketch) that is very funny but is very gimme gimme focused. Halloween seems to focus on "getting"... so we decided to start off our month focusing on "giving" instead. Not necessarily tangible giving, but instead... giving kindness.

Materials Needed: small cardboard box, foam stickers, stamps and stamp pad, markers, strips of paper, and a variety of Halloween stickers.

Directions:

1. Cover the box with stamps. We made ours a spider haven! If you want to be more creative, break out paint or markers to add more color to the box.

2. Add foam stickers and regular Halloween stickers.

Our completed Halloween kindness box

3. Next we had a little lesson about kindness. We sang our favorite "Kindness Begins with Me" song and watched Elmo sharing cookies in this video.

4. Then, we talked about kind words we can use and kind things that we can do. My son told me some kind things to say and do and I wrote them on little strips of paper.

(I may be adding "give mommy hugs" to his box :))

5. We folded up the strips and he put them into the box.

6. This week we are going to pull out a strip of paper each day and try and remember to do or say that kind thing that day... and all week long!

In keeping with our Halloween fun... we also stamped spiders onto a big spider web and talked about how spiders are kind and keep our houses bug free.

We also walked around the neighborhood once we were done to check out the spider webs.

Sharing, How Kindness Grows by Fran Shaw is a great book to read along with this activity and help kids see how being kind can have a continuous positive effect.

There are so many ways to reinforce kindness throughout the day at home or in a classroom! In my previous classroom I had a board for "Petals of Friendship." I had a little necklace I wore all day that had a pocket filled with laminated cardstock petals attached to it. Whenever I would catch kids being kind... they would earn a petal to go stick on their petals of friendship board flower. Sometimes there were tangible rewards once their flower was completely filled with petals... but usually the reward was just to remind them of how many people loved them and thought of them as friends because of all the nice things that they did!

Do you have any special ways that you acknowledge and celebrate kindness in your homes or school?