Kindergarten Kindness

In May, about fifty people around the globe engaged a week-long Compassion Challenge to deepen in acts of caring in their corner of the world, as well as the nuances of it within themselves.

In Shanghai, China, amid covid lockdown, Yidan led her 5-year-old students in a parallel week of kindness. On Day 1, she gave her students homework to do a small act of kindness.

One of the students helped her parents to vaccum clean, and drew a picture of it:

Another watered mom's plants:

One of the children made dumplings for her whole family:

Another of the students folded clothes for her mom and dad:

One of the students used both sides of the paper to draw and write. He said, "I did a little act of kindness to mother earth. I saved the trees."

A student said, "I love you mom and thank you" and drew a picture:

One of the students picked up trash around his housing complex:

Another kindergartener found a little snail and fed it with vegetables, as well as providing a home for it:

Another child went to find stray cats and fed them water and food:

Other students helped a friend up after falling, gave their parents hugs, shared food with friends, offered their mother water to drink, and beyond. And it was only Day 1!

A few days later, the students watched a video called, 'Color Your World With Kindness,' and their homework was to draw the color of their world with kindness, reflecting on three questions: "What color can you see when you do a little act of kindness? What color do you turn into when you do a little act of kindness? What color does the other person or do other things turn into when you helped?"

One of the students drew a picture of himself turning yellow when he fed a horse. Yellow was his favorite color, and yellow also means happiness for him:

Another kindergartener drew herself turning pink while watering the flowers. Pink is a color of love and happiness for her. Her flowers turned into nice colors, too:

Another student drew a picture of himself turning into green when he did a little act of kindness. He said green means love and also means calm. 

Each color in the rainbow represents an emotion. We have many different feelings and every feeling is okay. When we add them together, a vibrant rainbow is formed. How beautiful!

In this last picture, a child drew herself: after she did a little act of kindness, she turned into a rainbow:

Finally, in honor of our little acts of kindness week, I wrote a short poem:

A little act of kindness a day
Keeps our world hooray