Teaching children the concept and value of kindness is an important goal of schools across the country. Flower Hill Primary School, like its sister buildings across Huntington UFSD is in the midst of a kindness campaign.
This is the second year that Flower Hill is participating in the ‘Great Kindness Challenge,’” Principal Lucia Laguarda said. “We are spreading kindness one child at a time here and every day is a spirit day.”
The Great Kindness Challenge is being observed worldwide this week. Last year, over 10.5 million students attending more than 19,000 schools in 103 countries performed over 500 million acts of kindness according to organizers of the initiative.
“The Great Kindness Challenge is a proactive and positive bullying prevention initiative that improves school climate and increases student engagement,” states the organization’s website. “The Great Kindness Challenge is one week devoted to performing as many acts of kindness as possible on campus.”
Flower Hill students were happy to show the world that “kindness matters,” Ms. Laguarda said. “Monday was ‘Dream of Kindness Day’ and everyone wore pajamas.” Daily special spirit days are scheduled throughout the week.
Teacher Erika Brignati created an attractive bulletin board highlighting her class’ participation in a “kindness train.” Every student had a Post-It note on their back and the classmate behind them wrote a compliment on it.
“Students are also encouraged to write down on a link whenever they ‘catch someone being kind’ so that they can make a kindness chain,” Ms. Laguarda said. “We’ll see if the chain becomes as long as the one we had last year that took over the main entrance lobby and hallway. At Flower Hill, we always choose kind!”