Encourage Good Character with This Easy Incentive

Last school year we brainstormed things we could do to encourage kindness.  We wanted to recognize good character instead of bad character.  After brainstorming about this, our counselor created the Kindness Tree.  The Kindness Tree was one of my favorite things about school!

Whenever any staff member saw a student doing something kind, then that person could place the student’s name on a colored heart and put it into the Kindness Jar.  The Kindness Jar was stored in the library for staff members to drop the heart into.  Then on Friday the counselor would announce the students’ names who were in the Kindness Jar, and they could come to the office to get a prize.  Each heart went on the Kindness Tree the following week.

As you can see, the tree has all different colors of hearts.  That is because each month the counselor would hand out a different color of hearts.  For example, we received orange hearts in the fall, red hearts at Christmas time, and pink hearts in the spring.  The kids LOVED the tree and wanted to know if they could put hearts on the tree, as well, if they caught someone being kind.  Because students wanted to participate in the Kindness Tree , I thought it would be a great idea if each classroom could have a tree and students could manage putting hearts on it when they saw someone being kind.