Ben's Bells Kindness Mural

Last week parents and teachers came together to put up a "be kind" mural at the front of our school.  Ben's Bells is an amazing non-profit in Tucson, that promotes the importance of kindness.  

The mission of Ben's Bells is to "inspire, educate, and motivate people  to realize the impact of intentional kindness, and to empower individuals to act according to that awareness, thereby strengthening ourselves, our relationships and our communities."  Learn more about Ben's Bells here:    https://bensbells.org 

Our school, St. Mark's, is what is called a "Kind Campus".  We promote kind actions and words within our school.  At this time there is no real curriculum through Ben's Bells at the preschool level.  So how does our school teach young children at this age kindness?   We believe that it is necessary at this age to give children the vocabulary they need to express themselves.  We also believe in the importance of promoting a child's social-emotion well-being.

Basically, we promote kindness at this young age through literacy, through modeling positive words and actions, and by constantly positively reinforcing kind behavior.  As Jeanette Maré states, kindness is a learned behavior.  It's not taught in one day.  By starting early the power of kindness has the ability to become something wonderful and affect and motivated everyone around us.

Courtyard Day Activities 2015

Every year at St. Mark's Preschool and Kindergarten and The Straus Center at Temple Emanuel do two shared activities with each other.  First, their school invites two of our classes over for a Very wonderful and fun Thanksgiving Day celebration.  Then in the Spring, our school invites two of their classes over for a fun day in the courtyard at our school.  It's a wonderful relationship, and creates a warm feeling of community between both schools. 

Here are pictures from our event at set-up time.  I really wish I was able to take pictures during the event but I was too swamped!

So here it is pre-kids and not quite ready to go!

The quiet reading and puppet area.

Ball pit and tubes.  One parent managed to create a super cool extra long tube!

Pom Pom catapults.

Crazy hair area with colored chalk and beading. 

Dancing with scarves and beautiful music. 

This tarp was used to gather and do songs and stories, and also to enjoy Popsicles at the end.  During the event it was covered in Legos and Duplos. 

Playdough in two different colors to mix. 

Ribbons attached to hair bands to color. They are made to fit on the child's wrist to use for dancing.  We supplied a rainbow of water colors to use to paint with and q-tips for paint brushes.  This was very popular and eventually we needed to move some kids over to benches, just to have enough room to accommodate all the children that wanted to make one.

Bubbles, of course!

Sidewalk chalk. 

This is a must see while children are playing to get the effect of it.  These were "ice castles". Where you pour salt on big blocks of ice and then spray or drip food coloring on it.  Our ice also had treasures frozen inside, which made it even more fun to try and get them out!

Then lots and lots of boxes of all different sizes.  Kind of a "use your imagination and see what you can do" kind of area.