Have you Filled a Bucket Today? A guide to Daily Happiness for Kids

 McCloud, C. (2010). Have You Filled a Bucket Today? A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids. Michigan: Nelson Publishing & Marketing. Grade K-4
Written by: Carol McCloud
Awards:

2007 - Mom's Choice Award, Best Children's Picture Book (Behavioral category)

2007 - Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Award, Best Children's Picture Book

2007 - DIY Book Festival, Best Children's Picture Book

2007 - Books-and-Authors.net, Best Children's Picture Book

2007 - Best You Can Be Foundation, Top 10 Children's Books

2007 - London Book Festival, Honorable Mention

2008 - Nautilus Book Award, Silver Medal (Children's/Young Adults - Non-Fiction)

2008 - NABE Pinnacle Book Achievement Award

2011 - Purple Dragonfly Book Award, First Place (Educational/Instructional category)
Subject Area: Social Science
Genre: Fiction

 Summary:

This story is about anti-bullying and self-esteem. It states that you need to "Fill Buckets." This simply means that your need to be nice to friends, teachers, parents, grandparents, and essentially everyone, and a simple compliment or nice action can really make a difference in a person's day. If you are unkind to people then you dip their bucket making them not have as happy of a day. The book gives all sorts of way that your could fill someone's buckets and ways to prevent dipping their buckets.

Initiating Questions/Activity:

1. How do you make yourself happy?
2. How do other make you happy?
3. What do you do to make people happy?
4. What do you think the buckets are about?

Activity:
Have a discussion with the children about how you could be a good friend. Have the kids sit in a circle and have each student share one way they could be a good friend. Then, have the students go around in the circle again and state one way someone has been a good friend to them. 


Extending Questions/Activities:

Questions:

1. How could you fill a bucket?
2. How would your friends feel if you dipped their bucket?
3. Who has an imaginary bucket?
4. What would fill your bucket?

Activity:
Make cards with different scenarios between people (positive and negative). Hand a card to each child in the class. Have a bucket in the front of the room and a bag of something desirable (example: candy). Have the students come to the front of the room and read their situation. If the situation is positive, put a piece of candy in the bucket and if it is negative, take a piece of candy out. This will show kids that they would be happier with "more candy" or in the case of self-esteem, more compliments and kind words and actions. Next, make sticks with the student's name on each popsicle stick. Have the kids sit in a circle and pick a stick. The kids will go around the room, pick a stick and say a compliment about their classmate or do something for them that could "fill their bucket."