Kindness
“Kindness is something anyone can give without losing anything of themselves”
As a year 3 group, we have been focussing on kindness in our skills week. Mrs Cronje and Ms Blake’s class have adopted kindness jars. Inside of these jars are wonderful stories of kindness that our children have either been involved in or acts of kindness that they have received.
Here are some of them:
“My sister helped me do a back-bend. Thank you Umi”
“I helped my friend build a puzzle”
“I calmed my friend down and it helped her”
“We gave R20 to the office that we found. We were honest”
“I helped my friend when she got hurt”
“I was looking for my eraser and Keona gave me hers. I did not ask for it but it was very kind”
“I helped my friend build a puzzle”
“I used ice words to my friends and my friends helped my alot”
“I helped my friend”
“My friend gave me a health Pokemon card”
“I helped lots of people to clean their desks”
“In Science my friend and I helped each other”
“I gave play-dough to my friend”
“My friend was being kind to me”
“It was my birthday and I gave everyone their favourite doughnut”
“My friend had nobody to play with so I played with him”
Even if we don’t have physical kindness jars in our homes, why not begin to collect your kindness memories in your heart?
“Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.” – Princess Diana
Carol Blake
Year 3 Teacher
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Kind, Caring and Encouraging
This week has been extra special to the BIS family, as we have been celebrating the BIS Kindness Challenge for 2023. This wonderful initiative was introduced by our amazing school counsellor, Kayla Smith, and is targeted at the Year 4 to 12 students.
The goal is to spread kindness throughout our school this month, ensuring that it is a value our students and staff uphold at BIS.
Students are encouraged to show each other kindness by doing a variety of challenges and tasks. Some of these activities include:
- The Kindness Challenge: There are multiple random acts of kindness that students are challenged to complete. Such as: Write a list of 5 things that you love about yourself or Make sure your pets know how much they’re loved!
- A Kindness Tree: This tree will be popping up on a display board and it is going to blossom with the handprints of students containing kind messages and pictures.
- Mirror Motivation: Teachers will leave a motivational or kind message for students that will be added to the bathroom mirrors.
- Kindness Stone: Students decorate a stone with kind words that will be added to our garden.
- Chain of Kindness: Students had to reflect and write down a time that someone was kind to them. This will be added together to form a long kindness paper chain.
- “Caught you being kind” vouchers: These are given to students when they complete random acts of kindness. This will be kept for a surprise towards the end of the Kindness Challenge!
Class 5RdP has our very own No Drama Llama Award that is handed out at the end of every week to a student that has shown kind, caring and encouraging behaviour.
We look forward to seeing the entire school participate in the BIS Kindness Challenge and spread kindness like confetti!
“If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely!” – Roald Dahl
Ria du Plessis
Year 5 Teacher and Coordinator
A Healthy Mind Is The Greatest Treasure To Find
As adults, our mental health- our psychological, emotional and social well-being — impacts every area of our life. Our mental health helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. This is no difference when it comes to children. Our children’s mental health helps determine their academic success, their motivation levels and drive, their levels of joy and their ability to healthily connect and socialise.
“It takes a village to raise a child.” For me, no proverb rings more true than this. It takes a community of people to provide for, support, and interact positively with children for those children to grow and develop into the person they are meant to be. I believe that we as parents, teachers, counsellors, assistant teachers, carers, grandparents, aunts and uncles- the adult role players are endless- are all responsible for helping cultivate our children’s mental health.
At BIS, we are committed to providing a quality and engaging learning environment. We prefer to work from a whole-child framework, where we believe that in order for our students to achieve academic success, their mental, emotional and social needs need to be considered and supported. As such, the counselling department is beginning with new ventures in Term 2, as a means to offer pro-active and preventative intervention. These will include more group work and engagement with the larger student body, in addition to the individual counselling sessions, which will continue at school.
The following are confirmed dates of workshops that will be taking place this term:
- Year 5 – 22 April ; 29 April and 6 May
- Year 6 – 22 April ; 26 April and 6 May
- Year 12 – 28 April
Additional information related to the Y5 and Y6 workshops will be shared with our parents ahead of each scheduled date.
Mental Health Day takes place on the 11th of May 2022. It is estimated that one in every five children presents with a diagnosable and treatable mental health disorder. During this week on campus, we will be raising awareness on youth mental health issues around the world; and how our children can support and safeguard their own mental health. “What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candour, and more unashamed conversation.” – Glenn Close
Let us, together as parents and teachers, intentionally strive to help our children in the search for their treasure – a healthy mind. With the treasure of a healthy mind, comes the jewels of joy, healthy self-esteem, positive relationships, motivation and empathy for others. Let us ensure that we are supporting, and mindfully playing our part, in raising happy, healthy and inspired children.
Kayla Smith
School Counsellor
Ms Kayla Smith – Blouberg International School Counsellor
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Teamwork Makes The Dream Work!
The Year 4s have been learning about Making Peace and Helping People To Belong as part of our Global Perspectives unit.
We’ve explored important questions such as:
- What makes a good friend?
- What causes arguments or conflict between people?
- How can I maintain good relationships and resolve conflict with others?
It doesn’t really matter what age you are, you will always have to collaborate and work together with others, whether it’s in a social, professional or family environment. We’ve focussed mainly on our own behaviour and what we can do to be a good friend and help prevent or resolve conflict.
“We are not a team because we work together. We are a team because we respect, trust and care for each other.” – Vala Afshar
Take a look at the words students shared of qualities that a good friend would have. We also integrated Global Perspectives with our Art where they had to create a collaborative, puzzle artwork. The students did a wonderful job working together and encouraging each other – whilst having fun!
We are so thankful to have such a wonderful team at BIS: the students, parents, teachers, assistants, maintenance staff, sport coaches, administration and principal.
You are all appreciated and valued!
Ria du Plessis
Year Teacher
