“Share a happy story with your friend,” “Write down 5 things you are grateful,” “Learn how to say ‘Hello’ and ‘Thank you’ in one new different language,” “Give your family member a hug”…… This is a “to do list” quite different from the usual homework. Instead of asking students to use their intelligence to solve problems, they are expected to carry out small but warm acts of kindness.

A“Kindness Challenge Week”was launched in Grade 4 and 5. The tasks mentioned above are the items from the kindness challenge list that students have accomplished withinaweek. This list contains a total of 50 kindness acts that students are encouraged to doto spread kindness to their parents, peers, teachers, and others.

To encourage students to participate more and completeasmanyofthe 50 small acts of kindnessas possible, activities with different themes were set upforevery dayofthe Challenge Week. On Greeting Monday,students need to complete the challenge by giving friendly greetings tofiveteachers andtenclassmates they meet. Although these daily greetings are small gestures, they are one of the best ways to express kindness. On Sharing Tuesday, students were asked to bring one of their favorite books to school and share their favorite story with a friend at reading time.Writing Wednesday’s challenge was to ask students to write a thank you note to their heroes (e.g., their parents, teachers, or anyonewhohelpsin their daily life.) to express their gratitude. Thursdaywas Caring Day, which was combined with the theme of this week’sPersonalGrowth lesson. The fourth graders learned how to care for others and prevent school bullying, and the fifth graders learned how to take care of themselves better by learning about the physical and psychological changes during puberty. The last day of the Kindness Challenge Week was to reflect.For example,some students wrote down acts of kindness that have impressed them, while others thought about how kindness has affectedtheirlivespersonally.

In addition to the kindness challenge list and different activities, a kindness mailbox and a kindness tag card wereset up in each class.Students couldwrite theirwords ofgratitude to othersor their appreciation and blessings to their peers onanote and post it into the mailbox. And their homeroom teachersopenedthe mailbox and deliver these kindness notes to the students in the morning PB lesson the next day. Meanwhile, the student whoreceivesthe tag card would do anactofkindnessand write down his or her name at the back, and then pass it totheirclassmates to continue.

Byreceiving kindnotes every morning and passing around the kindness tag card, students were encouraged to express their kindness and complete morechallenges.

Some of the school clubs also organized activities related to kindness. For example, for the rock painting club on Wednesday, students painted and wrote their understanding and appealing expressions to make “kindness rocks.”

The Kindness Challenge was only for one week, but acts of kindness represent more than that. During Spring, with plenty of kindness activities, we hope students will experience the joy of acting kindly and receiving kindness, planting a seed of kindness in their hearts as they grow.

(Written by Sun Fanfan,Wu Yin, Liu Lei Pictures byTeachers)