The KINDergarten Kindness Ninjas of West Carrollton

We were invited to be Kindness Ninjas by Joys of Kinder up in Canada who started the Kindness Ninja movement! Check out www.kindnessninjasrvs.com to see their mission! They sent us a Kindness Ninja kit including a Kindness Ninja Master, red ninja headbands, a pledge for us to say, a plaque for us to make our mark on as a pledge, and a book made by her class about different ways to show kindness!

We read many books about kindness! Here are some of our favorites! 

We took the pledge and took our mission to change the world through Random Acts of Kindness (RAK’s) very seriously! We started out by making signs to help spread the message of kindness throughout our school. 

We RAK’d Miss. S’s class by sneaking into their room and leaving hearts for each student with a message telling them they were special.

We RAK’d the whole upstairs Kindergarten by sneaking little pumpkins into empty classrooms and in the kids cubbies for Halloween. 

We RAK’d Mrs. Thompson’s class by leaving pencils with flag toppers that said, “Kindness Matters” on their desks.

We left notes saying they were RAK’d by the Kindness Ninjas and now it was their turn to spread kindness around and change the world. We did this all anonymously and snuck into the rooms hoping no one would find out our secret identities! It was all about doing the Random Acts of Kindness without expecting anything back in return. It showed the kids that giving is even better and more joyous than receiving!

We started thinking about how we could show kindness to our community. Homelessness had come up in conversations as people who need help and we listed what their needs would be. 100 Day was coming up so we challenged ourselves to collect 100 toiletries like shampoo, soap, deodorant, toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. The kids ended up collecting 332 items! 

The kids put them in groups of ten to figure out how many items we had. Next, they sorted them by type of item. 

They put the different groups into boxes and then labeled the boxes. 

We all felt that those who were going through homelessness needed some kind words of encouragement so for 100 Day we set out to write 100 notes of encouragement for the West Carrollton Food Bank to pass out to those in need. 

The last thing to do is for me and Mr. Myers to deliver everything which we will do later this week! This was such a labor of love and the Kindness Ninjas are not finished. Their concern for those going through homelessness continues. They are very concerned about them sleeping on the hard ground and being cold so we are exploring avenues to see how we can help with this. They are also very concerned about homeless animals so we will see where that takes us! One thing this whole experience has thought me is that young children have big hearts and are capable of doing great things! They CAN change the world and have already gotten a good start at changing the world one kind act at a time! ❤️

Through this problem-based learning project, skills we have been learning about in Math, Reading, Writing, Social Studies and Science were all being used. Because they were being used authentically, the kids never even realized they were practicing any of these skills.  They just used the skills because they needed to...and because they needed to, they wanted to. This is why problem based, inquiry based, project based and play based learning work so well. They actually apply the skills they learn and see the need for them as they use them.

Animals in Winter: A Kindergarten Investigation

After our Bird Study, the kids started talking about the birds and how they would survive the winter. After reading The Night Tree and Stranger in the Woods, they started wondering about other animals and what they do in the winter! They knew bears hibernated and birds flew south but little else on the subject. So as they wondered I created experiences in our room to explore animals in the winter!

I knew that as they played and investigated and read the books, there would be a lot of inspiration for both fiction and informational writing so I made sure to provide materials for writing also.



Here they explored the tracks that animals leave behind. They explored with white play dough and toy animals with accurate footprints. To record what they noticed, they drew the animal, it’s footprint and labeled it.





We read books and watched videos about animals in winter and found out that they did three things! Hibernated, migrated, or adapted to the weather! We formed expert groups to dig a bit deeper and create a three dimensional mural in the hallway to show what they learned and that others could learn from.

Here is the Hibernating Team’s project:

Here is the Adaptation Team’s Project:

Here is the Migrating Team’s project:

To celebrate the end of our study, next week we are going to create bird feeders and put out food for the animals that live around our school!

Here are some other things that have been going on in our room!

Writing Winter Animal pattern books are helping the students see the correct spelling of sight words and give them practice with spelling them correctly, remembering to put spaces between words and tackling harder words by writing down the letters they hear when they say the word slowly.

We created paintings inspired by a favorite book...Owl Moon.



We created crystals by mixing Borax and hot water, then looked closer and recorded our observations.





We looked closer at snowflakes and created our own. They loved leaning about Snowflake Bentley and seeing the book he made of his photographs of snowflakes!





They created winter stories.







Here are some math experiences. We have been focusing on addition.

I told this friend that I still needed to add a plus and equal sign so she just made her own!



Here are some of the literacy experiences in our literacy area:

Slap it is always a favorite game. One friend says a sight word. The first to slap it on their side gets a point.





The gingerbread man game is basically hangman for sight words.



It has been a fun month! Stay tuned for more very soon! Our Kindness Ninjas have been doing some random acts of kindness that you will hear about soon!