“Give a little happiness”. That is the message that we want the children to embrace and act upon for this year’s SSDB initiative. Our imanites from Iman Childcare (Simei) embarked on quite a few projects that focused on kindness – self, family and community, animals, environment and plants. It sounded like a far-fetched vision for our young imanites to undertake initially, but they proved otherwise. Never underestimate their potential for greatness.
As individuals, it is equally important to provide self affirmation to create confidence and simply to love oneself and accept who we are. Only then can we begin the process of gifting the people and things around us with the gift of happiness and kindness. So how do we teach children to be kind to themselves? Children discussed different ways in which they can show love to themselves. They also played a game where they shared with their classmates things that they love about themselves.
The children radiated kindness to families and community. Our Imanites were involved in the SSDB launch and they handed out cookies with kind messages to the neighbours. The parents were also involved in creating a kindness bridge. Both parents and child wrote down simple acts of kindness on the tiles which were then formed into a big bridge.
Children also took on the Ramadhan on Wheels project. Food donations were collected from the public, our Imanities and their parents. Packing of food items were also done by our Imanities and the delivery of Ramadhan bags were done by our Imanites and their parents. The objective of the project was to expose the children to community work and to raise their awareness about those who are less fortunate than them. Through this project, we hoped that our Imanites would be empathetic towards others and also be thankful for what they have. Parents have expressed their positive feedbacks about the project as they felt that it was a good learning experience and an eye-opener. It taught the children to be more grateful and appreciative towards others.
Special furry friends from AVA visited us and we learnt more about how we should treat the rabbits. Prior to that, each class was involved in focusing on an animal topic of choice to learn about and K1 and K2 classes decided upon endangerment of sea turtles due to pollution and the endangerment of birds due to capitalisation. The children were shown videos, and facts on the animals and how water pollution and capitalisation led to the endangerment of these animals. The children then used different recycled materials to make the animals. This is linked to the next activity – being kind to the environment.
Children talked about the different people in the community and ways of showing their gratitude. One of the example given was on the public cleaners and the children discussed ways on how to help them – by picking up litters. Teachers brought the children around the neighbourhood and they picked up the litters. They then talked about the importance of keeping their environment clean.
Keeping the environment clean also involves taking care of plants. Teachers and children discussed on the importance of plants to the environment and the repercussions of destroying them. They learnt how plants are vital to our very own existence and that any unkind acts will affect the life cycle of all living things. Children showed kindness to plants by planting their own plants in pots that were made by themselves. The children brought empty 1.5litres bottles to school and with the help of the teacher, they cut the bottles to make into pots. They then painted and decorated the pots with red and white paint to symbolise our national flag.
This then led to our selling of National Day pots during the recent national day celebration. Parents showed their support and involvement by contributing bottles and buying the pots sold by their own children.
Looking back, it was an enriching journey for the children as well as teachers. Kindness is never far from us. There will always be opportunities to demonstrate it daily. Let us all make kindness part of our lifestyle. One little act each day is all it takes. Go ahead. Give it a go. Practise will make us better. 😊
