FHE, filling eachothers jars with kindness

I thought that since my new goal is trying to find Joy, I would try to make it a little easier by helping my kids and myself to remember to speak kind words to eachother.. Lets face it when they are being kind and polite it is SOO MUCH easier to love them and it always helps to hear kind words from others:)

PREP: I printed out a the above saying and then made a jar with each childs name on it. After I did that I made 2 more jars, one that said "nice words" and was filled with M & M's and the other that said "naughty or unkind words" and was filled with screws (you could use rocks or marbles, I just didn't have any)...

I started off by using some nice things that often get said in our home: "your my best friend", "I love you", "your funny", "you look like a princess, (kind of a long story)"  and then we moved onto the un kind things that often get said: "if you don't do it then I wont be your friend", "your a meanie", "I don't like you", "we never get to have ANY FUN"... :) these are things that the kids often say so it was easy for them to relate to these examples. We went around the room saying things good and bad that we had said today.. For every good thing you said to someone you got to put an M & M in their jar and for every un kind thing you said to them you got to put a screw in their jar.. We talked about filling eachothers jars with kind words and loving actions (the M & M's). The kids really loved this and it seemed like they really got it, every time they put or got a screw in there jar they would say "ahh sad".. it was nice to see them taking in the lesson and really understanding that the way we talk to eachother effects our moods and what our "jars" get filled with.. :)

Game: After the kids had eaten all of their M & M's we played a game, the Kindness toss.... We all sat in a circle and I started off with the stuffed animal. You throw the animal to someone in the circle and whoever you throw it to, you have to say something nice about that person.. It was soo funny to hear the things Ryker and Briyler came up with.. "Your pretty", "Your a good dancer", "You have cool hair" .... I LOVED watching them actually think about what they wanted to say.

We ended off with cookies for dessert and it made for a GREAT NIGHT:0) soo happy to be back on the FHE train...... I don't know why my computer isn't letting me download pictures anymore but I will figure it out sooner or later:)