"Have You Filled A Bucket Today" Issue

[TeacherShelly]

Dear All,

I love the book Have You Filled A Bucket Lately, A Child's Guide to Daily Happiness. I know kids need something concrete to hang abstract ideas on, so I even think it would be cool to buy buckets (say, at Target Dollar Spot) to have kids fill. However, here's what happened last year:

- Secret Bucket Fillers! Each kid got the name of another kid whose bucket they would secretly fill. It had to be free and from the heart. At the end of a few days, we revealed who had whom. For some, it worked as planned. For others, though:
- "My bucket didn't get filled!"
- "What!? I was sooooooo nice to you, I walked you to the cafeteria..."
- "Oh."
- Two unhappy kids.... one for not feeling filled and the other for not being appreciated/recognized.

What is the deal. Some people genuinely have big leaks in their buckets and all goodness just seeps out the hole and they need more More MORE.

THen I did "Compliments," during morning meeting. Everyone had three teddy bear math counters and had to give one along with a compliment to three other kids. Some kids are just not going to get many compliments, while others rack up a pile. I put the onus on the group at the end of the year, after they knew each other and the process very well, to make sure everyone ended up with three bears. Then the perpetually empty children complained that they got lame compliments (You are creative, seemed lame to one girl).

Thoughts?

[schoolteacher]

Here is a post I made on another forum explaining how I work this. Even those who had social issues wound up doing very well by the end of the year - they made friends, felt like they belonged to the group, felt cared about. I really love the way this built up rapport among my students:

I attach manila envelopes along the front of the classroom, one per child.

I tape a picture of a bucket with the child's name underneath to the envelope.

At the end of each day, we verbally appreciate each other. It is a great way to have a calm end to the day. Only those students who are packed up and sitting up nicely are called on to appreciate another student. The other student also must be packed up and sitting up nicely. This is great incentive for students to get ready quickly and quietly.

They say things like: I appreciate Semaj for helping me with my math today. Or I appreciate Lucy for sitting with me at lunch and playing with me at recess.

Then the student who appreciated Lucy gets a strip from a coffee can I keep at the front of the room (file attached) that says: You are a bucket filler, great job! and puts it in Lucy's bucket. I tell her: Lucy filled your bucket today, now you can fill hers.

They LOVE this. If I notice that someone's bucket has no strips in it, I tell the class to be on the lookout for good things that those students are doing. I call on anyone who can appreciate those students first. We always get a number of hands up for each student who is low on strips.

They really enjoyed seeing their buckets filling up with these paper strips, a concrete way of seeing what a wonderful job they were doing filling other people's buckets. At the end of the day when we did this appreciation, people beamed with pride when someone appreciated them, and everyone watched solemnly as the buckets got filled.

At the end of a period of time, say a month, I tell the class that I will take out all of their strips and put them back in the coffee can, counting how many each person has. I tell them I like to see who is filling other people's buckets. In reality, I don't count, I just fill the coffee can up again.

I am recycling the strips for next year's bucket filling - they hold up pretty well.

[Teacher Chele]

I love these ideas!!! My son's teacher did something like this (1st grade). She called it Warm Fuzzies - She has fuzzy pom-poms and when she noticed someone doing something kind or if the kids told her that someone had been kind she put a pom-pom in a clear cup. When the cup was full they had a party.

[VANewbie]

Chele did she have one class cup or individual ones?

[FourSquare]

Would this work for third and fourth grade, or is it more of a K-2 thing?

[roseteacher12]

I am definitely incorporating "Bucket Filling" in my classroom next year! I'm not quite sure how I'm going to set it up yet (especially because I teach half day K and having 35 or so buckets would take up a lot of room!) I know some others on the forum have posted pics of their Bucket Filling bulletin boards. Anyone care to share theirs if you have any?

[TeacherShelly]

Oooh, I was looking at the bucketfillers101 website and saw this poster:
Use a Lid! I love that, esp. for kids who get into the whole learned helplessness of, "He dipped me!" This is perfect.

So I went and bought the planter cups from the dollar spot. Man it was HARD resisting the metal buckets with star cutouts and so on, but $6 or $22? I had to go with the plain planters. (Maybe at the end of the school year I will reuse them as thank-you gifts for each family - you know, thank you for helping us grow...)

[Lynnnn725]

This is a school-wide practice at my school (K-5). I'm not so sure how much the upper grades implement this though.

Originally Posted by FourSquare

Would this work for third and fourth grade, or is it more of a K-2 thing?

[ecsmom]

I did a compliment jar in 4th grade. The kids wrote compliments for each other for doing above and beyond things. I pulled out a name on Friday and bought that person an ice cream. The kids liked it and it was an incentive for them to look for the positives in each other.

[TeacherShelly]

Originally Posted by ecsmom

I did a compliment jar in 4th grade. The kids wrote compliments for each other for doing above and beyond things. I pulled out a name on Friday and bought that person an ice cream. The kids liked it and it was an incentive for them to look for the positives in each other.

Did they make a big deal if one kid was pulled more than once, or if someone didn't get pulled all year?