Bucket Filling Craftivity End of the Year

Hello again from the Crazy Critter Café!

Where has May gone?! Between having 2 boys playing baseball, end of year assessments and activities at school, this month has been a total blur. Only 9 more days and it's sweet SUMMERTIME! {minus workdays and professional development.... but who's counting?}

In the midst of all the assessing, schedule changes, and end of year activities over the past several weeks, the kids have been a *little* out of sorts {well, maybe more than just a *little*}. I decided we needed to come together and have a little heart-to-heart, come to Jesus meeting.

Some are having such a hard time getting along so I decided we needed to have another lesson on bucket filling. I read the book Bucket Filling from A to Z, by Carol McCloud and Caryn Butzke. ·  We talked about all the ways we've filled buckets this year and how we felt when we filled someone else's bucket, when our bucket was filled, etc. AND THEY ALL SAT AND LISTENED...and PARTICIPATED...AND COOPERATED!!!

After reading the book I wanted to extend this little spur of the moment meeting, so I let them create their own bucket and write ways they have either filled someone's bucket this year or ways their bucket has been filled. This was a very simple craftivity, nothing fancy at all, but it had their attention! And they loved talking with their table teams as they shared bucket filling ideas. They were HELPING each other, filling buckets during this activity ........and they didn't even realize it.

I started by giving each child a plain sheet of white paper. They were to follow my directions on how to draw a bucket. As you can see, they turned out in different sizes and shapes. This was a great teachable moment to demonstrate how we all are different and our "buckets" inside {our feelings} are also different.

Then we brainstormed all the ways we've seen bucket filling in action this year and they wrote some ideas on their buckets that applied to them.

We then glued wiggly eyes and I drew a smiley face with a Sharpie. To make the handles I hole punched edges of the bucket after it was glued on construction paper, laced yarn through each hole and taped it on the back to stay in place.

They loved sharing ideas on their buckets! This little lesson encouraged them to get back on track finding the "good" in people ~ being bucket fillers again.

We displayed our buckets in the hall for everyone to see how we've worked to be a bucket filling class. Now let's hope we can continue this excitement for the next 9 days! :-)

Thanks for stopping by the Crazy Critter Cafe! I'd love to hear how you encourage bucket filling in your class! Have a great last few weeks if you're still in school. If you're out, enjoy your summer!