Activity 1: (10 minutes) PROSOCIAL SKILLS OVERVIEW

Introduce the lesson with the slideshow and student check-in questions. Review the Pyramid of Happiness anchor chart from the slides. Review the third level of the pyramid and perform that action (wrap arms around yourself in a hug). Make the connection of empathy to the feelings of belonging and connection. Remind students about the actions associated with each level of the pyramid. Check for understanding:

• What is kindness?
• What is one thing we can do to show kindness?
• What is cooperation?
• What is one way we can cooperate with others?
• What can we do if someone won’t cooperate with us?
• What is empathy?
• How does asking questions help us develop empathy?

Encourage the children to tell you about something that they have learned to do. Examples might be: ride a bike, write their name, etc. Ask the children how they learned to do these skills or activities. Just like learning to write our names, learning to be kind, cooperate, and have empathy takes time and practice. We can practice being kind every day.

Activity 2: (25 minutes) KINDNESS

Read A Small Kindness, by Stacy McAnulty, or watch the read-aloud video by Books With Blue. Have a discussion:

• What were all the different kindnesses that the people in the book showed to one another?
• Did you notice that when one person received a kindness, they passed another kindness on to someone else?
• Can you think of other ways to be kind that were not shown in the book?

Drop a small stone into a large container of water. Let the children watch and observe the ripple that expands out from where the stone was dropped, and how the ripple comes back to the middle. Kindness is like a ripple, each little thing we do goes out like a ripple to others around us and makes the world a happier place. Kindness makes others happy, and it makes us feel good too. Have the children predict what would happen if you dropped a big stone into the water. Just like big stones make bigger ripples, big kindnesses have a big effect too—but all it takes is one small kindness to make our classroom and world a better place.

• Ask the children to share about a time when they were kind to others. How did the friend respond? How did that feel?
• Tell of a time when someone did something kind for you. How did that feel?

Have the children illustrate an idea of something they can do to be kind on the Kindness is… handout. Have each child dictate a short story about their picture, and share everyone’s pictures during a group gathering time. How many different ways to be kind did the class identify?

Activity 3: (10 minutes) SHARING

Check for understanding:

• What does it mean to share?
• How did you learn to share?

Ask the class to imagine that they have a younger brother or sister. If you were teaching a child who was younger than you to share, how would you do it?

• What would you tell or show them?
• How could you help them learn to share?

Invite each child to share about a way that they could show another child how to share. Write all their ideas down on a chart or the bulletin board.

Choose a favorite sharing song from the list below, or choose one of your own to sing and dance to the music. Encourage the children to learn the lyrics about sharing and use them in their play with others.

Sharing songs to dance and sing:

• The Sharing Song, Jack Johnson
• The Sharing Song, Raffi
• Kindness Song, Musical Dots
• Share, Hap Palmer
• Sesame Street: Sharing with Ernie and Elmo
• Hip Hop Harry: Sharing is Caring

Activity 4: (15 minutes) COOPERATION

Cooperation means working together to get something done or to solve a problem.

• If you wanted to build a tower from the floor to the ceiling, could you do it by yourself? What if you had some help?
• If you wanted to clean up the classroom, could you do it by yourself? What if you had some help?

When we all work together, it makes jobs easier, and makes jobs that would be impossible to do by ourselves much easier. Read Swimmy by Leo Leoni, or watch the read-aloud video by Mr. Paulson Reads.

• What was the problem that the fish were having?
• How did the fish cooperate to avoid getting eaten by the big fish?
• What were all the small fish able to do together that they weren’t able to do by themselves?

Divide the class into small groups of 4 or 5 children. Give each team a stack of paper plates. There should be one more paper plate than the number of children in each group. Tell the students that you are going to pretend that the ground is hot lava. Their task is to get their team to the other side of the room or playground without letting anyone step on the ground. They can step on the plates, but not on the floor. Encourage the students to get with their team to figure out how they are going to get everyone across the room. You may need to demonstrate how if the students line up behind each other they can each stand on a plate and with one extra, they can place this on the ground in front of the first person in line. Then each teammate steps forward one step onto the paper plate in front of them. The last student in line can then pick up the paper plate they were standing on and pass it to the front. After the activity talk about how working together makes tasks easier, and a little more fun, too.

Activity 5: (15 minutes) EMPATHY

Think about skills that we learned previously about communicating. Review the rules about being a good listener:

• Be an active listener.
• Listen first, speak second!
• Make and keep eye contact with the person talking.
• Hold still while someone is talking. Stay focused.
• When it is your turn to speak, talk slow enough and loud enough to be understood.
• Don’t interrupt the speaker. Take turns talking.

Being a good listener is really important if we want to develop empathy. Review the slideshow pages about empathy.

• Empathy is understanding how others feel and caring for them.
• Knowing our own feelings helps us see how others might be feeling.
• Everyone has different feelings, even in the same moment.
• Good friends care about how others feel.
• We can develop empathy by asking questions, caring for others, and considering how others feel.

Read, The Rabbit Listened, by Cori Doerfield, or watch the read-aloud video by Buddy Son Storytime. Have a discussion:

• How did all the animals suggest that Taylor fix his problems?
• Which animal showed empathy?
• How did the rabbit show empathy?
• Have you ever felt sad and nobody knew how you felt?
• What if your friends could see that you were sad and they helped make you feel better?
• How can you notice how others are feeling?
• How can you help others when they don’t feel happy?
• How do you know when someone needs some care or empathy?