This week, we read Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud and Will You Fill My Bucket? (Daily Acts of Love Around the World) by Carol McCloud and Karen Wells.
We did some activities to correspond with the books and reinforce the concepts of filling the buckets of others which also helps to fill our own.
After I read the kids Have you Filled a Bucket Today?, we talked about the concepts a bit and then I had each of the kids decorate a plastic bucket. They used Sharpies, googly eyes and eye stickers. They also coloured a small bucket using a sheet that I had printed out from here and added their name and then glued that onto the other side of their bucket.
The kids then filled out little encouragements to each other both on just scraps of paper and on special bucket filler papers I had printed out and added them into each other’s buckets.
Using the whiteboard, we brainstormed ideas for how we could be bucket fillers and things that would be considered bucket dippers. I think this was a good exercise for those of my kids who are visual learners.
The kids filled out different activity sheets corresponding to the books…questionnaires, word puzzles, coloring pages and affirmations. I also printed off certificates to give them for the end of the week after they had practised their “bucket filling” every day.
After the kids had a firm grasp on the concept, I read them the second book and we discussed that one.
Big Disclaimer to Moms:
I had many moments when I regretted reading this book to the kids as some days, it seemed to just become a new way of tattling or a new insult as cries of, “she dipped my bucket” and accusations of “you dipped my bucket like 5 times today…you are the worst Bucket Dipper” roared through the house. I do think that it was a good concept to introduce them to, but we have a lot more work to do on working on personal accountability before this makes a difference in our home!
This is a list of where I found my free printables for this book:
Activities for The Kissing Hand
Activities for A Bad Case of Stripes
Activities for If You Give a Cat a Cupcake
Activities for Fancy Nancy (great for vocabulary!)
Love your parental disclaimer, and I really like the idea of this book and your accompanying activities. I’m off to the library to see if I can find it.
The name of your blog still makes me smile!
Thanks Claire! There was a wait list at our local library for the book but it’s a good one!
I really love the idea of filling up someone else’s bucket. I haven’t seen this book, but I will be looking for it. I will be sharing this post.
I thought it was a great visual for kids about happiness and how what we do and say affects others. Thanks for sharing the post! I always appreciate how your Read, Explore, Learn concept first made me think of doing activities to correspond with books because now it is such a fun part of what we do.