Have You Filled a Bucket Today?

On Rosh Hashanah, we go to the synagogue and hear the shofar being sounded. The call of the shofar serves to wake us up, directs us to pay attention to the kind of person we are, so as to become a better person in the year ahead.

In honor of Rosh HaShanah we read Have You Filled a Bucket Today? By Carol Mc Cloud.
If you are not familiar with book let me share the gist of the book with you. Every baby is born with an invisible bucket. The bucket represents a child's mental and emotional health. You can't see the bucket, but it's there. All day long everyone in the world walks around with an invisible bucket. Your bucket has one purpose only. It's purpose is to hold your good thoughts and good feelings about yourself. You feel happy and good when your bucket is full, and sad/lonely when you bucket is empty. You fill a bucket when you show love to someone or when you say or do something kind. But, you can dip into a bucket and take out some good feelings too. You dip into a bucket when you make fun of someone, say or do mean things, or even when you ignore someone.

After we read this wonderful book to the children today, we talked with them about in the year ahead how we can best be bucket fillers and not bucket dippers!
We will be using the terms "bucket fillers and bucket dippers" here at school throughout the year. If you are interested in learning more about this book and it's powerful message perhaps you might want to pick up a copy for your home library or you are more than welcome to borrow our classroom copy.