It's Bucket Filling Time!

 Bucket Filling 101

"Have You Filled A Bucket Today?" by Carol McCloud is one of my FAVORITE 'feel good' stories and a book that is known by many. There are a variety of books that can be used to compliment the original story, such as; "How Full is your Bucket?" This is the story I chose this year to review "bucket filling" with my 1st-4th grade students.  

Since most of my students are familiar with bucket filling from last year, I start the lesson by discussing "bucket filling" vs. "bucket dipping"; however, I do read "Have You Filled A Bucket Today?" to my PreK and Kindergarten students, since bucket filling is a new concept for them.  

After the students watch the video, I ask them to give me examples of "bucket filling" and "bucket dipping" they noticed in the story.

Bucket Filling Activities

The first activity is one that I created last year and used again this year during my bucket filling lesson. For more information, go to this link. 

This is a new activity I implemented this year with my lesson. I found some large rocks at one of our local landscaping stores and the owner was kind enough to donate them to me. I wrote negative behaviors, words and actions on each rock, and made a sad bucket. During the lesson, I called up a student to hold the empty (sad) bucket by the handle in front of the class. I explained to the class that my bucket was sad because I was adding negative words and actions to it, instead of filling it up with kind and positive behavior. As I read each rock aloud and added them to the bucket the student was holding, the bucket got heavier and was soon too hard to hold. I asked the student who was holding the bucket how he/she would feel if they had to carry around the bucket filled with the negative rocks all day. We discussed how hard it would be and then we related it to having to carry around those negative feelings with us all day and how hard that would be, too. We discussed as a class the importance of filling a person's bucket with positive, kind and respectful words, behaviors and actions.

 I created and laminated a picture on cardstock of a bucket with band-aids and entitled it, "Ways to Heal and Fill a Bucket". Laminating the page allowed me the opportunity to use dry-erase markers to write down each classes' response of how to "Heal and Fill a Bucket". I was able to erase their comments afterwards and reuse the page again during my next lesson.

I found sand buckets on sale at Wal-Mart and decorated them. I left each class a bucket to fill until I came back to their class for their next counseling lesson. Each class was responsible for working on their "bucket filling" skills. If they were caught filling a bucket by their teacher, they were allowed to put their name in the bucket on the "Great Job at Being a Bucket Filler!" paper I provided. When I return to their classroom, I will draw two names out of the bucket and those two students will receive a prize.

I gave this worksheet to my older students to take home as an extension to my bucket filling lesson. My younger students received an "I'm a Bucket Filler" coloring sheet to complete. If you are looking for GREAT and FREE resources, check out Bucket Fillers 101.