MARCH KINDNESS DAY
Thursday, March 15th, 2018
THEME: Build an Attitude of Gratitude
A thankful heart keeps us thinking positive, looking for the good in others, and wards off feelings of fear and
injustice. Focusing on the things we are grateful for, both extrinsic and intrinsic, will help children realize how LUCKY (blessed) they are. It may also motivate them to look for ways to help others who are in need of their kindness.
How does gratitude influence our personal lives?
Gratitude is proven to make people happier, less anxious, and more energized. Maybe because grateful people are more forgiving, confident, and charitable.
KINDNESS MONTHLY CHALLENGE
ONE MINUTE
GRATITUDE JOURNAL
AT THE END OF EACH DAY OF THE SCHOOL DAY
or WORK DAY THIS MONTH, TAKE ONE MINUTE A DAY
TO WRITE DOWN SOMETHING THAT YOU ARE GRATEFUL FOR.
ACCESS OUR KINDNESS BEGINS WITH ME PROGRAM ONLINE
There are so many GREAT Kindness Activities for this month of March in our Kindness Begin with Me Curriculum. All schools that fund Kindness T-Shirts for their students are given a password to log into our curriculum page. The program is included in the cost of the Kindness T-Shirts. For more information, contact us at CommunityKindnessMovement@gmail.com
ENROLL FOR NEXT YEAR
It’s that time of year to think about participation in our Annual Kindness Program for the 2018-19 school year and fundraising for your Kindness T-Shirts. We will be uploading NEW 2018 Kindness T-Shirt Fundraising Letter soon to our website. We ask that you go to our website www.TheCKM.org, click on the APPLY NOW tab, and fill out the form if your school is planning to join us. Soon, we will also be sending out fundraising ideas that have worked for other schools.
https://www.communitykindnessmovement.com/apply-now/
TERRY FREDERICKSON
NEW CKM BOARD MEMBER
The AMAZING Terry Frederickson, whom has served as our CKM Vice President for the past three years, we now be serving as a Board of Director. Terry is a HUGE reason why the CKM is a Non-Profit today. We appreciate all that he has done for the CKM and continues you to do. Terry is the owner of New Day Products and Resources, whom prints our Kindness T-shirts and we could not do all this without them.
JODI ST-MARTIN
NEWEST CKM
VICE PRESIDENT
The CKM would like to give a warm welcome to our newest Vice President, Jodi St-Martin. Jodi will be leading our Community Relations. Jodi works for the City of Meridian, as their Community Relations Specialist, which is a great asset to the CKM.
“An attitude of gratitude means making it a habit to express thankfulness and appreciation in all parts of your life, on a regular basis, for both the big and small things alike.”
HAPPY February Kindness Day
Thursday, February, 15th, 2018
THEME: We {heart} Kindness!
Love is Born Through the Giving of Kindness
LOVE and KINDNESS is what the month of February is all about. We hope you will continue to encourage your students to do the our Random Acts of Kindness Challenge Calendar:
Tomorrow is BE EXTRA KIND TO YOUR TEACHER…:)
Here is a fun activity you can do with your students.
In our Kindness Begins with Me Planning Booklet, we have many ideas to help you plan each of your monthly Kindness Day activities. For the month of February, we wanted to share two of our activities that you could also do tomorrow or use for a Kindness discussion:
REPAIRING A HEART
- Objective: Students will see how damaging harsh words or unkind acts can be on someone.
- Inspire: Ask the students how they feel when someone is mean to them.
- Empower: Have students write down a time when they were hurt and how they would have handled the situation differently.
- Act: Pass around a large paper heart. Have each student take a turn crumpling it in reference to when their feelings might have been hurt. Then try and smooth it out. It will be hard to restore it back to normal but it can be repaired and bandaged with kind words and actions. Have each student place a band aid on the heart with their names on it. Hang it in the class to remind students to always be kind and to be the “band-aid” of kindness.
HEALTH BENEFITS OF KINDNESS
(Discussion goes along with CKM Video in the Media Suggestions)
Community Kindness Movement – 6 Scientific Reason Why Kindness is GOOD FOR YOU!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20r2pTq3Iv8&t=2s
Kindness gives us healthier hearts. Acts of kindness are often accompanied by emotional warmth. Emotional
warmth produces the hormone oxytocin in the brain and throughout the body. Of much recent interest is its significant role
in the cardiovascular system. Oxytocin causes the release of a chemical called nitric oxide in blood vessels, which dilates (expands) the blood vessels. This reduces blood pressure, and therefore oxytocin is known as a “cardio-protective” hormone because it protects the heart (by lowering blood pressure). The key is that acts kindness can produce oxytocin, and therefore kindness can be said to be cardio-protective.
How can kindness improve your health? Volunteering results in more health benefits
than exercising or quitting smoking. “Helping a neighbor, volunteering, or donating goods and services results in a helper’s high.” —Stephen Post, Author,“The Hidden Gifts of Helping”.
People who volunteer live a longer more satisfied life.“People who volunteer tend to
experience fewer aches and pains. Giving help to others protects overall health twice
as much as aspirin protects against heart disease. People 55 and older w ho volunteer
for two or more organizations have an impressive 44% lower likelihood of dying, and
that’s after sifting out every other contributing factor, including physical health, exercise, gender, habits like smoking, marital status and many more. This is a stronger effect than exercising four times a week or going to church.” — Christine
Carter, Author“ Raising Happiness; In Pursuit of Joyful Kids and Happier Parents”.
Here is a fun video collage from January’s Kindness Day. Students made Kindness Posters to hang up in their school for their Kindness Week. The posters act as a visual tool in reminding students to do kind things and to encourage putting smiles on other students faces…:) Great job!
CKM FEBRUARY KINDNESS DAY: February 15th, 2018
MONTHLY THEME: We {heart} Kindness!
Love is Born Through the Giving of Kindness
KINDNESS RAK WEEK: February 11-17, 2018
You’re invited to join in RAK week-long celebration of kindness at http://www.RandomActsofKindness.org.
“Love is like a seed of kindness. When taken care of properly, the love can grow into a plant, flower, or fruit. Kindness blooms as we continue to show our love for everyone around us.”
Encourage your students to participate in our CKM FEBRUARY RAK CALENDAR!
January Kindness Day: Thursday, January 18th, 2018
Theme: Kindness is Contagious
Smile..Pass it On – Pay It Forward – Put a Smile on Someone’s Face
This is a reminder to wear your Kindness T-Shirts or the color yellow this Thursday
and to encourage your students to do the same.
Smiling is not just a universal means of communicating, it’s also a frequent one. More than 30% of us smile more than 20 times a day and less than 14% of us smile less than 5 times a day. In fact, those with the greatest superpowers are actually children, who smile as many as 400 times per day!
Kindness is as contagious, like a common cold in the winter. When we are kind to each other, it softens our hearts and makes us want to be kind to others as well. Kindness also has proven to make us happier. When we are happier, we become the best version of ourselves. Teachers and parents are often amazed at some of the Pay It Forward ideas that students come up with. It really does teach a powerful lesson: “That one person can make a difference and help others in need despite age, background, money, or social status. Random acts of kindness inspire us all to be better people.” Thank you for your support of this wonderful initiative. Please share your Pay it Forward stories with us at CommunityKindnessMovement@gmail.com, so your story can inspire others to Pay it Forward. Have a wonderful Kindness Day!
Benefits of Smiling:
- When you smile, you look good and feel good.
- When others see you smile, they smile too.
- When you want to tap into a superpower to help yourself and others live longer and to live a healthier and happier lives…SMILE 🙂
- Smiling seems to give us the same happiness that exercising induces terms of how our brain responds. In short: our brain feels good and tells us to smile, we smile and tell our brain it feels good and so forth.
Why does this matter? Smiling leads to decrease in the stress-induced hormones that negatively affect your physical and mental health. Our children need to feel love, need to feel important, need to feel like someone cares about them. Smiling at them and letting them know you care could make a world of difference for them!
These are more great media options to include or to start your January’s Kindness Day discussion:
Happy Holidays from the CKM
Kindness Day: December 21st, 2017
Kindness Theme: “Kindness is Always in Season” – Secret Service Month
What a wonderful time of year to perform Secret Service to others! This holiday season is all about coming together, showing loved ones how much we care, making memories to be treasured for years to come, and giving the most precious gift – the gift of ourselves. We would like to share a few videos to help transcend this message of KINDNESS and LOVE. We hope you joined in the our CKM Secret Service Activity or your school planned their own Secret Service Project.
Wishing you wonderful Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Next week we celebrate our DECEMBER KINDNESS DAY
THEME: “Kindness is Always in Season”
Date: Thursday, December 21st, 2017
he CKM would like to challenge you, your students, and/or children to participate in our Secret Service activity for the month of December. Most of you have one more week of school and what better way to celebrate by encouraging your students to join in the spirit of Christmas and performing a secret kind act each day. See handouts below.
We also would LOVE to hear and see what your school has been up to this year in spreading kindness and using our NEW Kindness Planning Booklet. Email us anytime at CommunityKindnessMovement@gmail.com. We are excited for 2018 and look forward to our NEW Kindness Video.
Happy NOVEMBER Kindness Day!
The CKM Board of Directors have voted in our NEW 2018 Executive Officers. We would like to extend a KIND WELCOME.
The CKM is excited for our NEW 2018 Kindness Video coming next year! Thank you, to all of the individuals that shared their time, generosity, and talents to help spread more KINDNESS throughout the State of Idaho. Film Day was a blast!
Happy Kindness Day (Tomorrow)
Date: Thursday, November 16th, 2017
Theme: Kindness Strengthens Relationships
One of the best way to increase our own happiness is to do things that make other people happy. In countless studies, kindness and generosity have been linked to greater life satisfaction, stronger relationships, and better mental and physical health – generous people even live longer.
Intentionally practicing kindness in our everyday lives, even on days when we’re not in a particularly generous mood, can go a long way toward turning kindness into a habit. That’s largely because of the way kindness breeds happiness: The good feelings serve to reinforce our kind acts and make us more likely to want to perform them in the future.
Practicing a Random Acts of Kindness is a good place to start. This practice involves performing five acts of kindness in one day and then writing about the experience. They can be anything from bringing a meal to a sick friend, to giving up your seat on the bus, to donating blood, to buying a drink for the person in line behind you at a cafe. For ideas, consider acts of kindness that you’ve witnessed or received in the past, and check out this Buzzfeed list of 101 suggestions. Random acts of kindness not only lift our spirits in the moment; they also have the potential to alter the way we feel about ourselves and increase healthy forms of self-esteem.
Remind your students to wear their Yellow Kindness T-Shirt tomorrow to school!
In the CKM Kindness Begins with Me Curriculum you will find the school activities and books suggested for November’s Kindness Day. We hope the planning booklets have been helpful this year and we will continue to improve them.
This month we teach students the importance of manners and why we should take into consideration the GOLDEN RULE on a daily basis. Having good manners can show people around us that we are mindful of them; good manners can also express our respect for others. Showing the students how good manners helps improve relationships between their peers and their teachers.
Activities Include:
GIVE A PAT ON THE BACK
COMPLIMENT CIRCLE
TOP SECRET LETTERS
“DO UNTO OTTERS” ACTIVITY – MANNERS ROLE PLAY
OCTOBER KINDNESS DAY 2017
October 19th, 2017
THEME: Make Kindness Your SUPERPOWER!
Wouldn’t it be amazing to have superhero powers? Which superpower would you pick — X-ray vision? The ability to leap tall buildings? Or fly at supersonic speed? In the world of comics, superpowers are often extraordinary skills that benefit others; and some can even save the day. If you had some kind of natural force or special power within you, how would you use it? When you put your heart into something, it changes everything. How you feel affects what you say and how you act — both of which greatly affect others. Isn’t this a superpower?
More and more we’re seeing that superheroes are showing up everywhere. These heroes’ superpowers are really expressions of heart values and true compassion. These values are embedded in each of us and lie dormant waiting to be cultivated. They are super because they can help rewrite a moment, heal emotional wounds, erase negative self-talk, improve relationships, nurture beauty, and grow happiness. They can change the perception and change outcomes — and ultimately, each and every time they are used, they help to create a better world.
There’s an uptick of everyday heroes unleashing a whole lot of kindness and love on our planet. It’s felt through their acts of care, compassion, tolerance and gratitude. Science is researching how these qualities of the heart can affect many things. They can change your life and the life of others; they can add light to darkness and hope to despair.
So how do you cultivate these superpowers? Here are 28 ways to improve out KINDNESS SUPERPOWER:
1. Use social media to promote positive messaging and compassion. Stand up for kindness.
3. Offer a hug or embrace for no reason.
4. Make peace with someone who has hurt you.
5. Experiment with positive attitudes. For instance, next time you go to the grocery store, enter the store with an attitude of kindness.
6. Say thank you and please every day without fail.
8. Help someone out in a practical way, such as offering help moving, cleaning up or babysitting.
9. Go on a complaint-free diet.
10. Encourage a friend or family member when they are uncertain or unmotivated.
11. Smile and make someone’s day a little brighter.
13. Send a kind email or card.
14. Invite someone new into your tribe; alleviate loneliness for just one person.
15. Hold the door open for the person behind you.
16. If you see someone being bullied, stand up for them.
17. Strike up a conversation with a stranger.
18. Let someone into your lane while driving.
19. Be generous with words of praise and appreciation.
20. Choose your mood. Notice yourself feeling upset, frustrated, impatient, angry, stressed or anxious. Take a few moments to shift that feeling..
21. Pray. Meditate on loving kindness: May you be happy, healthy, peaceful and loved.
22. Give someone a place to stay.
23. Say “I love you” more often to your family and friends.
24. Serve as a mentor. Generously share what you know and make it easier for someone else.
25. Commit to consistent self-care for yourself.
26. Adopt a neighbor. Many of us know of someone in our neighborhood who is either a single parent, or has a spouse in the military, or maybe is an elderly person living alone.
27. Power in Numbers. Crowd-sourcing is another act of care. We’re seeing more and more viral funding campaigns to help those in need. Instead of fuming over the news, people are transforming their anger into networking missions by tapping into their social networks to raise money.
28. Showing up and giving support to someone that has asked for it.
Maybe you’re not leaping tall buildings in a single bound, but remember your care, kindness and love have the power to transform many things. Cultivate your heart coherence and you’ll be surprised by the number of things in a day that you can change and improve for yourself and others. Amazing things can happen.
BULLY PREVENTION SPOTLIGHT
Did you know that as a young person, YOU have fifty percent (50%) more chance of stopping school bullying ( by standing up and telling the bully this it’s not ok) than a teacher does?!?!
BOOM! Well, that why the Community Kindness Movement has evolved into what it is today. We are here to help give our future generation the tools needed to help stop it! October is Bullying Prevention Month. Tomorrow we are celebrating our monthly KINDNESS DAY and teaching our youth that they are BRAVER, SMARTER, and STRONGER than they think. They each have the power to be a WORLD CHANGER.
Have a Happy Kindness Day…..Remember to wear your YELLOW KINDNESS T-SHIRTS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELgQvXN9pso//
Tomorrow we will send out our CKM Kindness Week 2017 slide show.