Kindness Connection: 2019 - 2020

During the 2019 - 2020 school year, Houghton Elementary School celebrated Kindness Connection Week beginning on Tuesday, January 21st and ending on Friday, January 24th with Kindness Connection Day on Wednesday, January 22, 2020. This year, our Kindness Connection theme focused on doing small acts of kindness for one another. In order to kick off this theme, teachers read the book, Kindness Snippet Jar by Diane Alber, to all students the morning of January 21st.

Following the reading of this book, children were encouraged to be on the lookout for opportunities to engage in an act of kindness as well as for acts of kindness done to them. When they engaged in an act of kindness or spotted someone else engaging in an act of kindness, children wrote these acts on colorful snippets of paper. At the end of each day, these snippets were added to the appropriate jar, which were placed on the bulletin board outside of the cafeteria, based on their grade level. Students were then able to watch these jars fill up with colorful acts of kindness throughout the week! Below are pictures of these jars being filled over the course of the week.

On Wednesday, January 22nd, teachers read a second supplementary book to all children entitled I Am Human: A Book of Empathy by Susan Verde. This book described a number of additional and simple ways that students could show kindness in school, in the community, and in the world.

At the end of the week, all students were given a Kindness Matters keychain, which can be seen below, that served as a token of appreciation for all of the acts of kindness that they engaged in throughout the week as well as a reminder to continue to show kindness throughout the year.