HAPPY KINDNESS DAY!
MAY you be KIND to YOURSELF
MAY you be KIND to OTHERS
MAY you be KIND to the EARTH
What an amazing year! It’s crazy to think that we are celebrating our last Kindness Day of the 2015-2016 School Year! No words can ever express my gratitude. Today, I just want each of you to know that I appreciate each of you. The CKM Committee has witnessed such a remarkable year. Our children have the ability to achieve greatness when we show them that we believe they can. Thanks to all the Principals and Teachers who supported our Annual Kindness Program in your schools and classrooms. The program was successful because you lead the effort in leading as a Models of Kindness. Because of you, the Kindness message made an impact on so many students. We hope you all have a wonderful Kindness Day and most importantly a fun and safe summer vacation with your family and friends.
Until Next Year!
If your school has not applied online through our online application and plans on participating next year, we recommend doing so at your earliest convenience.
Next year, will be a first come, first funded basis. If your school is willing to help fundraise for your own Kindness T-shirts, we would greatly appreciate any help offered. We will make available a few options in the Kindness T-Shirt design. We are able to offer school logos on the sleeve if requested and we will have Polo Style Kindness wear available for your faculty next year. The School cost of the Kindness T-Shirts are $3.50 per t-shirt for local pickup orders and $4.50 per t-shirt for shipped orders.
THANK YOU CKM COMMITTEE 2015-2016
Even though each of my CKM Committee Members deserves a Kindness Award, I wanted to surprise them today with their own CKM Cartoon Character! I appreciate everything these individuals have done to contribute to such a great cause and for being believers. These individuals will forever be called my friends. New Day Products, Region 5 PTA, and AllState Helping Hands Volunteer Program helped make this all happen with me. Thank you so much!
Terry Frederickson
Mary Kae Ryner
Melanie Mortensen
Jessie Arnold
MAY 2016 COMMUNITY KINDNESS AWARD
I want to thank the IDAHO PTA! It was only fitting to save them for this May’s Community Kindness Award. I appreciate the PTA partnering up with the CKM in providing a way to implement the program through their parent volunteers. The PTA also played a major role as a Non-Profit sponsor. I couldn’t have done all this without them! Mary Kae Ryner, you’re the best!
MAY 2016 STUDENT KINDNESS AWARD
I had the privilege in visiting Christine Donnell School of the Arts in Boise, Idaho, during the Idaho PTA Convention. I was able to grant the Student Kindness Award to Noah Orton. I was able to surprise Noah in front of all his classmates. All my kids joined me that day and it was fun having them witness me giving out the Kindness Award (since they beg me each month to give it to them). Thank you, Principal Leipf for nominating Noah and for letting us make a visit. I also want to give another shout out to Teresa Costella, their PTA President, for implementing the CKM Program and for their PTA funding all of their Kindness T-Shirts!
WHY I LIKE MY KINDNESS T-SHIRT and 2015 KINDNESS WEEK
April’s Kindness Day is Thursday, April 21st, 2016
(All Principals, please reply back confirming that you are receiving our monthly newsletters – Thank you!)
April Kindness Theme
“SMILE – PASS IT ON”!
😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀
The SMILE theme goes along well with the City of Pocatello, the Smile Capital. The Smile Ordinance was passed by Mayor George Phillips, in 1948. The Smile Ordnance made it illegal not to SMILE in Pocatello. To continue on this kind gesture tradition, Kindness Day will be “Smile Day”! Join the universal language of the smile by smiling and making others smile!
A recent scientific study reported than an anonymous 28-year-old person walked into a clinic and donated a kidney. It set off a “pay it forward” type ripple effect where the spouses or other family members of recipients of a kidney donated one of theirs to someone else in need. The “domino effect,” as it was called in the New England Journal of Medicine report, spanned the length and breadth of the United States of America, where 10 people received a new kidney as a consequence of that anonymous donor.
School Kindness Day SMILE Planning Ideas
This is a mini kindness video to help celebrate SMILE Day. Please share with your teachers.
They can show this video the first 5 minutes of class on their smart boards.
SCHOOL KINDNESS DAY IDEA:
You will need (6) Yellow Poster Boards. Spell out “S – M – I – L – E” on the first (5) boards. On the (6th) board write “It’s Kindness Day!”. We made (2) sets for our school and having students hold them, wearing their Kindness T-shirts. They will display these as students and faculty arrive for school. You can also do this at the end of the school day. For this Kindness Day task, your School Principal can select students who have shown examples in being “world changers” or “kindness leaders” in your school. Have a wonderful Kindness Day and remember to remind your students to wear their Yellow Kindness T-Shirts or Yellow, but most importantly, their SMILE!
WE HAVE A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT COMING NEXT WEEK!
March Kindness Day shares the holiday with St. Patrick’s Day – Thursday, March 17th, 2016
MARCH THEME: “Make Someone Feel Special”
MARCH KINDNESS DAY School Activity:
“Make Someone Feel Special” is what it’s all about this month!
Your school can use our idea provided below or come up with your own. The sky is the limit! We want to remind all the Principals about the feedback emails that we sent out. This monthly Kindness Day Newsletter does get distributed to ALL of your PTA Presidents in the Pocatello and Chubbuck School District. The schools outside the District can provide us the email of the individual implementing the CKM in your school and we can add them to our email list. You can contact Melissa at CommunityKindnessMovement@gmail.com.
Thank you, may you all have a successful and happy Kindness Day!
Kindness Awards for January 2016
Gem Prep Charter School: Brady, Abigail, and Faithlynn
Community Kindness Award: Cade Sutton, Kindness Video Filmmaker
ANNOUNCEMENTS
We want to help make your monthly Kindness Day a successful one! Not only for all our local schools, but also for the businesses that are out in our community joining our Kindness Movement efforts and wearing the Kindness t-shirts with our students. This being our first year, we are constantly coming up with new ideas to better the CKM Program. If you have feedback that you would like to share, please send it our way. We have been in touch with the Pocatello/Chubbuck School District #25 about getting feedback from all their School Principals. We encourage other Principals outside of the District to also give us their feedback. We would like to hear about how and if the CKM Program is helping make a difference in your schools and most importantly, helping with Bullying Prevention efforts. In time, CKM will only get better. Thank you for you support and patience.
We are happy to announce that we have added New CKM Team Members and still looking for others that want to help! If your school has a parent that would be interested in joining us as your school’s representative, we would highly recommend it. They can contact us through our website or on FB page. We also want to encourage students to join our CKM leadership positions as well. Wilcox Middle School has a student-formed PTA that attended the PTA Legislature Day with us. I ate lunch with a few of those students and they mentioned how their school has been celebrating the monthly Kindness Days. I loved hearing that. Thank you, Wilcox Middle School for implementing the CKM Program, regardless of the funding for the Kindness T-shirts. We have considered starting an application process for next year. We feel this might be the best way to determine which schools would like to continue or implement the CKM Program for next year and to give us a better idea of how much funding we would need to raise. If we plan on doing this, we will make the announcement very soon!
We hope this monthly Kindness Day Newsletter will provide you with more information to make your Kindness Day a successful one. Below we are providing you with suggested planning tools and a reminder of the Kindness Day Theme. We welcome you to customize the theme to fit your school. You can forward this email onto your Kindness Ambassador(s) that are helping implement Kindness Day. The Kindness Day Theme Calendar is available on our website HERE. Encourage your students to wear their Yellow Kindness T-shirts this Thursday and if your students don’t have Kindness T-shirts, invite them to wear the color Yellow and Red!
I will be surprising a very deserving student from Indian Hills Elementary with the Student Kindness Award. She was nominated by her grandmother. Remember that anyone can fill out a Kindness Award Nomination Form on our website. We grant a Kindness Award to (1) Student and (1) Individual in our Community each month. Thank you, and may everyone have a wonderful Kindness Day!
February 18th 2016 Theme – “Kindness Heart Attack”
February is the perfect month to celebrate LOVE and KINDNESS.
5-10 min. KINDNESS DAY LESSON:
By Performing Kindness, it builds a Healthier Heart!
Acts of kindness are often accompanied by emotional warmth. Emotional warmth produces the hormone oxytocin in the brain and throughout the body. Of much recent interest is its significant role in the cardiovascular system.
Oxytocin causes the release of a chemical called nitric oxide in blood vessels, which dilates (expands) the blood vessels. This reduces blood pressure, and therefore, oxytocin is known as a “cardioprotective” hormone because it protects the heart (by lowering blood pressure). The key is that acts kindness can produce oxytocin, and therefore, kindness can be said to be cardioprotective.
How can kindness improve your health?
Volunteering results in more health benefits than exercising or quitting smoking. “Helping a neighbor, volunteering, or donating goods and services results in a helper’s high.” —Stephen Post, Author,“The Hidden Gifts of Helping”.
It’s a classic tale, the story of Ebenezer Scrooge — the epitome of selfishness, the quintessential mean-spirited, miserly, narcissistic old man. Yet as Scrooge discovers the joy of good deeds, he blooms with the “helper’s high” – and his spirit is reborn. And a merrier man had never been seen, as the story goes.
In the last few years, researchers have looked at the so-called helper’s high and its effects on the human body. Scientists are searching to understand just how altruism — the wish to perform good deeds — affects our health, even our longevity.
Acts of heroism are one form of altruism — as we saw on 9/11, when firemen rushed into the World Trade Center. Many firemen, chaplains, and citizens joined the rescue and recovery effort, working grueling 12-hour shifts.
In everyday life, countless people choose to give up free time to volunteer — whether it’s serving at soup kitchens, cleaning up litter, taking elderly people to the grocery store, or helping a next-door neighbor.
What prompts a human being to act heroically? What makes us perform good deeds? When we act on behalf of other people, research shows that they feel greater comfort, less stress. But what about the do-gooder’s physiology — how is it affected? Can doing good make us healthier, as a growing number of scientists now believe? Can it even, as studies suggest, help us live longer?
Surprisingly, they found that numbers of children, education, class, and work status did not affect longevity. After following these women for 30 years, researchers found that 52% of those who did not volunteer had experienced a major illness — compared with 36% who did volunteer.
Two large studies found that older adults who volunteered reaped benefits in their health and well-being. Those who volunteered were living longer than non-volunteers. Another large study found a 44% reduction in early death among those who volunteered a lot — a greater effect than exercising four times a week — Christine Carter, Author“ Raising Happiness; In Pursuit of Joyful Kids and Happier Parents”.
Ideas for “Heart Attack” Theme:
- Use Yellow and Red paper to cut our your hearts to resemble Kindness and Love.
- Have your students write down how Kindness makes their hearts feel when they perform it or receive it. Then have your class heart attack your classroom door for display.
- Have your class “Heart Attack” another teacher’s class door with kind messages written on the hearts.
- Have each of your student assigned another classmate in their class. Have them write a heartfelt message to give to that other student and let them wear it on their Kindness T-shirts that day for all to see.
- Have your students draw pictures of themselves performing kindness or have them write how kindness makes them feel. Then take the hearts and tape them down in your hallway forming a path. Have a poster or bulletin board pre-made saying “We are building a path of Love and Kindness“. After Kindness Day you can take the hearts and display them on the bulletin board or around the poster to have on display for the rest of the month of February.
- In the secondary schools, put the hearts on the students lockers with premade message (you’re awesome, smartie, hugs) and challenge them to stick their hearts onto another person’s locker by the end of the day anonymously.
KINDNESS DAY is tomorrow, January 21st!
Don’t forget to wear your Yellow Kindness T-shirts or wear the color YELLOW!
You can order a t-shirt on our website at http://www.CommunityKindnessMovement.com
Join us for January’s Kindness Day Theme:
We need 8 to Live, 12 to Thrive – HUGS.
Research says that we need at least 8 hugs a day, but 12 would cause us to THRIVE! Let 12 be your goal TOMORROW!
12 Reasons why HUGS are good for us:
1. Hugs build trust and a sense of safety.
2. Hugs can instantly boost oxytocin levels, which heal feelings of loneliness, isolation, and anger.
3. Creates happiness
4. Hugs strengthen the immune system
5. Hugging boosts self-esteem.
6. Hugging relaxes muscles. Hugs release tension in the body.
7. Hugs can take away our pain.
8. Hugs balance out the nervous system
9. Hugs teach us how to give and receive
10. Hugs are so much like meditation and laughter. They teach us to let go and be present in the moment.
11. The energy exchange between the people hugging is an investment in the relationship.
12. Hugs spread KINDNESS, and it’s KINDNESS DAY, so let’s give some HUGS!
Tomorrow we will be rewarding our Kindness Awards, check back with us on our website or our Facebook page to see the announcement of the winners.
#communitykindnessmovement #kindnessmovement #kindnessbeginswithme #kindnessmatters #kindnessday
Melissa Nelson, founder of the Community Kindness Movement would like to extend the opportunity in recognizing (1) Student and (1) Adult in the Community that exemplify genuine Kindness. The Kindness Award would presented to (2) individuals that are nominated, each month on Kindness Day. Anyone can nominate someone and anyone can be a nominee. Kindness is for Everyone! We will announce the winners on our “Community Kindness Movement” FB page and here on our website.
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I have finally finished the planning of Kindness Day that is celebrate each month in school. We established every 3rd Thursday being Kindness Week, your school can do what fits best with your school schedule. For Pocatello/Chubbuck School District and other Community Schools, the best part about participating in the same day is to bring more “Unity” to all the kids in our Community. They will all see each other in their Kindness T-shirts and the Community will see more “Kindness” on those days. We also have local businesses out in the community participating and wearing their Kindness T-shirts on these days. So, it’s a Community Kindness Day. I encourage your school to join the “Kindness Movement” if you can on that day.