Character Education: A Lesson on Kindness

Today we did a lesson on kindness, a very visual lesson! We did this lesson last year and it worked so well, we wanted to do it again. It seemed to really help the students understand what happens to others when we use hurtful words.

I had 2 apples in front of me: Apple #1 and Apple #2. I told students that we were going to use nice words to the first apple. We took turns passing the apple around in a circle, saying nice things to it like, "I love your color!", "I like you", and "You're a nice apple". We handled that apple very carefully. For the second apple, we took turns being mean to it, saying mean things like "I don't like you", and "You're ugly!".

Once we were done passing around both apples, we talked about what the apples looked like. They both looked the same on the outside- no noticeable changes yet (I may or may not have pre-bruised it;)). Then I took a knife and cut the apples in half. Apple #1, the one we were nice to, looked perfectly normal on the inside. When we cut Apple #2 in half, it was all brown, bruised, and squishy. This lead us to discuss that using mean words can make someone feel really bad on the inside, even if they don't show it on the outside. The idea behind this lesson is a bit abstract, in terms of relating it to how we feel, but I think students really understood what using mean words can do someone... or, some apple ;) We always have to think about what we're going to say before we say it, or we can make our friends really sad.