how full is your bucket: 10+ activities

If you’re looking for ways to help kids become more empathetic and kind to one another, this book is a must have! “How Full is Your Bucket?” is a book written by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton that explores the power of positive relationships in our lives. The authors argue that we each have an invisible bucket that we carry with us, and that this bucket represents our store of positive emotions, feelings, and experiences. The book argues that when our bucket is full, we feel fulfilled, happy, and energized. On the other hand, when our bucket is empty, we feel drained, negative, and uninspired.

One of the key messages of the book is that everyone is capable of filling their own bucket, and that this can be done in a variety of ways. For example, we can fill our buckets by doing something kind for someone else, by expressing gratitude, by engaging in positive self-talk, or by doing something that brings us joy. The authors encourage readers to find what works best for them and to incorporate these activities into their daily lives.

This blog is give you 10+ ideas of HOW help kids understand and demonstrate how to fill each others buckets!

How full is your bucket: Making predictions

Before reading ANY book, it’s so important to start with making predictions. This helps kids start to activate their prior knowledge, allowing them to make more connections in the book! In this blog you’ll read more than 10 ways of how to help our kiddos truly explore and grasp the concepts of how we can be kind to one another and essentially “fill our buckets”.

Have you filled a bucket: Kindness cards

Kindness cards are a GREAT way to for kids to think about being kind to others, even if it’s hard sometimes. I like to put these kindness cards at a writing station at my house or my classroom. When I was in the classroom, I would assign different partners each week and those kids had to write at least one kindness note to each other over the week. something like “I really like how your shared with me this week”. They would then put it in their bucket fillers.

During reading: Types of bucket fillers

Throughout reading “How full is your bucket” I continue to ask my student about making predictions about the pages to follow. For example, I would ask questions like: 

1. Have you filled a bucket today? 
2. How do you fill a bucket? 
3. Are you a bucket filler? 
4. How can you fill your bucket? 
5. Is there a time when you emptied a bucket? How did that make you feel? 

The questions we can ask our kids are endless and focus on creating an environment where random acts of kindness, inclusivity, and just being kind to each other, really helps to make the world go round. 

How full is your bucket activities: 

After reading the book “How full is your bucket” I then ask the students questions like: Can you make a connection to this story? Have you filled a bucket today? Has someone emptied your bucket?

I like to write their answers down on chart paper as we brainstorm together. I find this really helps kids consolidate their knowledge, allowing them to apply the information learned!

The first follow-up activity for my students was to choose which are bucket fillers and which empty buckets. I love this activity because it really gets students to work together and discuss what makes them feel good and what make them feel badly. 

The next set of activities focus on bucket fillers and what empty’s our bucket. I love spreading the activities out over a number of days or weeks as I find it continues to develop a supporting and inclusive environment in your classroom or home. Here are some examples of our writing activities. I’ve also included sentence starters and differentiated writing papers, so that you can differentiate within your classroom at home. I find this is so important, because it allows you (as the teacher/parent) to properly challenge and encourage each student’s individual needs.  

The activities are truly endless with this book and can be extended throughout Kindergarten to Grade 6. You can adapt the activities to make them age appropriate as well. At the core, the main purpose is to teach and show by example, how when we are kind to one another, we are happier people ourselves. This, this makes the world go round. Let’s spread random acts of kindness.