Good Deeds Calendar

1. With Crayola® Erasable Colored Pencils, students write a list of things that they can do to help their family, neighborhood, or people around the world. For example, carry in groceries or organize a trash pick-up drive. A cozy quilt is a symbol for love and help. Using a straight edge, students draw a large rectangle on a file folder. Cut out the quilt with Crayola Scissors.
2. Inside the rectangle, outline quilt pieces: squares, triangles, or other imaginative designs. Fill in outlines with Crayola Washable Markers.
3. Cut out around three edges of each quilt patch with scissors. Fold up tabs. Place the quilt on construction paper. Trace tab openings on the paper. Remove quilt top. Write one good deed inside each space.
4. Cover edges of the quilt (not tabs) with a Crayola Glue Stick. Set quilt on top of colored paper. Make sure good deeds show through when tabs are open. Number tabs to correspond to days of the good-deed doing (such as Advent) or leave them blank (for Rosh Hashanah because it's all year).

LA: Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

LA: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.

LA: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.

SS: Identify and describe ways family, groups, and community influence the individual's daily life and personal choices.

SS: Identify roles as learned behavior patterns in groups situations such as student, family member, peer play group member, or club member.

VA: Intentionally take advantage of the qualities and characteristics of art media, techniques, and processes to enhance communication of experiences and ideas.

VA: Select and use the qualities of structures and functions of art to improve communication of ideas.

Possible classroom resources include: Random Acts of Kindness by Animals by Stephanie Laland; More Random Acts of Kindness by Conari Press; Acts of Kindness: How to Make a Gentle Difference by Madalee Macarty

In small groups, students brainstorm a variety of good deeds they can do for families, communities, state, country, and world. Students create a list of these deeds. Use this list as part of a whole class discussion to determine what the students wish to do as acts of kindness.

Students discuss the question: Who benefits the most from acts of kindness?

Organize a school-wide effort to participate in random acts of kindness. Students use recycled materials to create a collection box where students will document acts of kindness that they have witnessed. During morning announcements once a week, the announcer can select the "best of the best" acts and read them to the student body.