In my classroom, we are always teaching about kindness, modeling standing up for ourselves and others in appropriate ways, as well as other social-emotional lessons. Once or twice a month I take time to teach explicit circle time lessons with a focus on social-emotional learning. Now, remember I only meet with my class twice a week, if I met more frequently I’d also make these explicit lessons more frequent too. It is an important investment as any teacher knows to take the time for the implicit as well as explicit lessons about these topics. After this circle time lesson about kindness children will walk away with new ideas, words, and topic to talk about in class and home.

My circle time routine starts with a good morning song, a fun chant with movement, and then we sit and read and do a quick activity. It’s simple and usually lasts about 5 minutes, long enough to learn about learning in a group but short enough for everyone to be successful.

The Book

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The book I will be reading with my students is Sam and Jump by Jennifer K. Mann but so many others would work. Any book that has an act of kindness that you can talk about will be great.

Sam and Jump by Jennifer Mann is a sweet book about friendship, worry, loss, and reunification. A little boy is at the beach with this best friend his stuffed bunny Jump when he makes a new friend and ends up forgetting Jump at the beach. He’s distraught! A new gentle friendship deepens between these great boys after a simple but thoughtful act of kindness and don’t worry Jump isn’t swept off to sea!

Prep

Print out the printable emotion cards, laminate and cut out.

Download Here<– click here to print

The Circle Time Lesson About Kindness

After reading the book, talk briefly about the act of kindness in the book. Ask your students to be your kindness detectives and to help you decide what kindness looks like by calling out “I see kindness!” when the photographs you show them are of someone being kind. Practice yelling it out once before you start. When the card is one that is not kind, take the time to talk about it too by asking questions and modeling like this “How would you feel? I would feel sad if someone hit me. It would hurt!”

After the final photo, thank the children and remind them that using manners like saying thank you is a way to show kindness with your words.