Kindness Builds Happy Hearts

Dr. Jean shared this social story and activity on her blog, and I decided to adapt it for my class this year. I like that it is a very visual way to think about how our actions affect others around us.

To make it a bit more interactive, I gave each student a paper heart and another paper with an outline of the heart that said: "Kindness builds happy hearts."

Then I made up my own social story about a student going to preschool. In the story, a new student came to preschool and encountered some of the same challenges that my students do. This student wanted to play trains, but his friend wouldn't share. Then he was feeling angry and sad, so he grabbed the trains out of his friend's hands. (and so on...)

We talked about how those challenging things made his heart feel sad and hurt and small, and so each time something hard happened, we ripped a piece off of our paper heart.

I included both situations where someone else's unkind actions hurt the student, and where the student's own unkind choices made him feel sad as well because it definitely goes both ways.

After our hearts were all torn and broken, we turned the story around. We went back through the story and asked how we could fix or build up his heart again. As we thought of ways to be kind to our friends, we glued pieces back onto our hearts.

The fact that it was hard to fit the pieces of the heart back together again was also a visual for the impact that unkind actions can have. We can't take back those actions or words, and it's not always easy to fix the hurt that we feel. But the more kindness we give, the more we build up everyone's heart- it not only helps our friend's heart, but our own as well.