So we’ve been talking a lot in the classroom lately about the importance of kindness and generosity. 😀

We recently had a few hiccups socially and behaviorally between students in the classroom, so I figured I would take this experience and use it as a learning opportunity for us all. 🙂

When thinking deeply about how to explain these concepts, I relied heavily on many wise proverbs I learned when I was young. 😛One of the many we discussed was the following:

You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

Now this has nothing to do with flies, honey or vinegar, and if we were being realistic, a pile of poo would probably catch more flies than honey, but that is the beauty of this idiom. It’s figurative meaning is quite different from the literal meaning of the phrase. 😛

Anyway, we talked a lot about how honey or showing kindness will help them maintain more friendships and achieve more goals over a sour attitude, like vinegar. Plus, sometimes these things come full-circle and people usually end up getting more than they give. 🙂

For example, we watched, “The Kindness Boomerang,” which talked about how acts of kindness caused a butterfly effect to everyone around them, and in the end kindness came back to them.

Well, I have been busy racking my brain to come up with a meaningful project to help explain all the benefits of kind gestures. In the end, I came up with our current project, Spreading Joy in June. 😀

Essentially, during the whole month of June, the students will be performing random acts of kindness. The kids came up with three suggested acts to complete each week, and will then fill out a reflection card to tack upon our calendar. They will talk about what they did, and how it made them and the other person feel. 🙂
Week One:

• Bring a treat for someone you don’t usually talk with.
• Give a compliment to someone you don’t usually talk to.
• Help clean up the class at the end of the school day.

Anyway, today is day one and I thought that I should set the example by bringing in a treat for all the students and the teachers. 😀

I made no-bake peanut, honey and oatmeal granola bars.

It was the perfect beginning to this project, and very appropriate with all that sweet honey. 🙂

The bars were quite simple with only three ingredients: honey, peanut butter and oatmeal.
Krum seemed to like this project as well. 😉
To begin mix one cup honey with one cup peanut butter in a saucepan.
Next pour in three cups of oats.
Combine the oats with the melted peanut butter and honey. *drool*
Lastly, spread onto a sheet pan and refrigerate.
After enjoying their pan of oatmeal bars, the 6th graders took the second pan to students of another grade to spread the love. ❤
It was wonderful experience, and the bars were a healthy start to their morning. 😀

Here is the video on kindness if you want to check it out:

Also, feel free to join us by completing these kind acts each week and let me know how it goes. 😀
Until then. Bee kind.