At Heritage, we like to talk about good habits. Though people often think of habits as physical behaviours like brushing your teeth or washing your hands, good habits can also include character traits such as courtesy, gentleness, cheerfulness, and truthfulness that sometimes even work against our own natural tendencies. As Charlotte Mason wrote, ‘The habits of the child produce the character of the man.’ 

Year 4 have been talking about the very important habit of kindness, and they shared what they have been learning during Monday’s class assembly. 

The class started by acting out different scenarios to illustrate what it means to be kind, including being friendly, generous and considerate of other people’s feelings, showing good will to others and helping them when they need it, and showing concern when another person is upset. 

The pupils explained that the 17th of February is Random Acts of Kindness Day, a day created to encourage people to be extra kind to others. They displayed drawings that showed different acts of kindness such as letting someone else go first, leaving a positive note for someone, complimenting someone, or reading to a younger brother or sister. 

In their examination of kindness, the children have also been looking at a book called Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud and David Messing. They shared the story, which explains that everyone has an invisible bucket holding our good thoughts and good feelings about ourselves. When our bucket is full, we feel happy, but when that bucket is empty we feel sad. We all have the ability to fill peoples’ buckets by showing love or being kind to them, but can also take those good feelings out of a person’s bucket by being unkind to them. The book encourages us all to practise being ‘bucket fillers’ by thinking about what we can say or do to fill other peoples’ buckets.

Finally, the pupils ended the assembly with a prayer thanking God for his love and kindness, and asking for his help to be loving, caring and kind to those around us.