Purple Heart

Purple Heart

Spotlighting kindness.

He taonga rongonui te aroha ki te tangata

Goodwill towards others is a precious treasure.

Developing our kindness curriculum

As some of you may be aware, we developed our kindness curriculum as a way to show our support and aroha to the Holtz family who lost their son Eli earlier in the year through violence. 

As a team we were moved by their strength as a whanau and by their love and compassion for others who have been touched by violence, and like them we thought there must be something we can do.

For us it was about looking at how we could bring an anti violence message into the kindergarten day in proactive and positive ways. We shared conversations with our kindergarten whanau and came up with a range of things that we thought valuable and have been steadily working on these ideas. The astounding thing is that...

When we focus on kindness, 

kindness grows!

Creating our

Purple Heart

Stamp

We were very fortunate to have Hamilton artist Te Ahuora, come on board to help achieve our vision to grow kindness and aroha within our kindergarten day. 

He interpreted our ideas beautifully. It’s one thing to be able to draw, but to articulate someone’s whakaaro into art is really something else.

Te Ahuora really thought about what we were trying to achieve here and produced this wonderful art piece that speaks to children of kindness and reminds them of the aroha that is in their hearts to share.

Receiving a 

Purple Heart 

stamp

Love, compassion, empathy, generosity and joy for others are dispositions we want to nurture and are the attributes we look for when awarding children a 'Purple Heart' at kindergarten.

Tamariki receive a Purple Heart in recognition of their kindness and it's a special moment, a proud moment.

Of course we have a beautiful ritual surrounding this to honour kind efforts…

The stamp is placed on the wrist where children are able to feel their heart beating. Every time their heart beats, kindness is pushed out into the world to settle on the shoulders of others…in this way kindness grows.

Here the girls 'blow' on their Purple Heart stamp to push kindness out into the universe.

"I was folding the towels and I get a stamp. My friends were happy cause I made them get happy by folding the towels for them" said Taupaki.

What does kindness look like?

There are all sorts of ways that you can get a kindness stamp...

By caring for animals

Giving someone flowers

Doing a job for someone

Pushing a friend on the swing

Playing nicely together...being thoughtful, kind and caring.

Or showing a friend how to do something to help them achieve their goals.

"You have to be kind to people" said Sophia.

"When I give stuff to people I get a purple heart" said Darroll.

"Be nice and friendly and you get a purple heart" said Nat.

Taking responsibility to care for the environment...that's kind!

Helping a mate to put on his shoes...now that's an extremely friendly and a very kind thing to do!

"When you be someone's friend, you say please can you play with me and that's kindness, when you be nice" said Jacob.

"You help your friend get something or help them put their mihi outfit on" said Belle.

"You be very kind all day, sharing, showing people around and being helpful" said Kanin.


Or simply folding the laundry...that's helpful and kind. 

"There's lots of different ways to be kind"
 said Asjah.


While kindness might seem pretty straight forward to learn, it's a bit more complex than meets the eye.  We don't make children happy when we simply enable them to be receivers of kindness.  We escalate their feelings of happiness, improve their well being, reduce bullying, enrich their friendships, and build peace by teaching them to be 
givers of kindness." 
(Price-Mitchell, 2013)

 #Share your heart
In memory of Eli Holtz

In service to others

It's all about helping each other

We've set up a kitchen work station alongside our eating area so that children can work together on the cleaning up process following kai routines.  Children have responded with a great amount of enthusiasm and teamwork for this responsibility!

 Developing a disposition of care
The benefits of helping each other...

"The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service to others" (Mahatma Gandhi)

• Helping others makes you and others feel good
• Feeling good reduces stress levels
• Helping others boosts self esteem and makes you feel good about yourself
• Teamwork develops a sense of community, feelings of belonging through friendships shared goals and social connection
• Helping creates positiveness and a great vibe that is contagious! 

"Washing the dishes, not playing.  I'm washing the dishes.  I do drying the dishes too, it's work" said Ella Breeze.  "It's teamwork, everyone wants to do the dishes."

 

 "I like doing the dishes and I do it all the time...some days Mum doesn't let me do it at home.  Some days Papa doesn't let me do it at home.  I do it at kindy" said Sebastian.

"I wanna do washing.  I'm cleaning this so it's not wet" said Nat.

"We want to do dishes, we like to do dishes...do drying then putting them away" said Nate.

 

 

"I want to help because umm, I want to play and do the dishes.  I like doing dishes and drying and playing.  We help each other, we tidy up together" said Harper.

 

 

“Service is an act of giving. Service is giving something of ourselves for the benefit of others. When we serve others we show humility and empathy for the needs and desires of other living beings.” (Toni Christie, 2016).

Altogether this was an awesome helping week! 

 Opportunities like this provide chances for children to develop caring dispositions, which become skills for life.  And let's face it, the world needs all the kind, caring, thoughtful, community minded and most helpful people it can get!

Oh, and for those of you worried about the state of the water...don't worry, all the dishes were put in the dishwasher after the children had finished "cleaning" lol...but that's our little secret, wink, wink, nudge, nudge!

Arohanui,

Tania