Kindness Water Splashes Kind or Unkind Sort for SEL Curriculum

Inside: Use this kindness water splashes hands-on activity to help students decide what is kind and what is not kind in this sel curriculum sort.

As a student and then as a teacher and now as a mom with kids in school, we love summer around here.

It’s days with no alarm clocks, no summer lunches, and plenty of water time: pools, beach time, and water balloon fights.

Since we don’t own a pool we often have to invent our own water play around here, including inflatable pools, water balloon fights and water balloon slingshots.

And whenever we can connect summer fun with learning, it makes everything a little more fun and a little more hands-on for our kids.

So we’re connecting water splashes to social emotional learning and character education by helping kids decide what is kind and what is not with our Kindness Water Splashes Kind or Unkind Sort.

Great Ways to Teach SEL in the Summer:

The beauty of teaching social emotional learning and character education is that it can be taught anywhere, to any grade, for any amount of time. And it connects to any holiday, season, or “traditional” curriculum like reading and writing.

So while you can teach kindness at any time of the year, summer is a great time to dig in while kids aren’t pressured to learn other academic skills.

To connect social emotional learning to summer we use things like our Summer Kindness Challenge and our Summer Kindness Bucket List and our July Volunteer Challenge.

We also love to spread kindness on park days with our Random Acts of Kindness for Kids.

We also love to use our summer-themed kind or unkind sorts like our Kindness Suns, our Kindness Popsicles, and this Kindness Water Splash Activity.

How to Use the Kindness Water Splashes:

1. Purchase and print the cards and the Kind or Not Kind Pools on cardstock paper.

2. If you print them in black and white, you can color in the cards first. Make sure to use skin color crayons like these to ensure the students on the water splash cards are diverse.

3. Cut apart the cards.

4. Go over the pictures on the cards to ensure children understand what the picture depicts. You can use these as discussion starters before or after the activity.

5. The students will sort the cards by kind actions or unkind actions by placing the cards near the correct pool.

They can do this during independent centers, small groups, or as a whole group in a pocket chart.

6. To follow up on the activity, students can complete the worksheet to show their understanding.

7. To connect this sel activity to writing standards, students can draw a picture and write how they will choose to be kind this season. Pre-writers can dictate their sentences.