Growing Character In The Heart Garden

I've decided to take my character education program in a different direction this year. I have chosen to try something a little more tangible than imaginary buckets. The idea came to me when I was planting some flower seeds earlier this summer. Why not take the care needed to grow a plant and connect that idea to the care needed to grow a strong, independent person?

Enter The Heart Garden.

I plan on starting the school year with a little science experiment: We'll discuss as a class what we know about plants and how they grow. I'll bring three identical plants into the classroom and we will make some predictions about how they will grow and thrive (or not!) in different conditions. One will be placed in the sun where we'll water it as needed. The other two will go into the closet and be left. At the end of the first week or two we'll compare how they've grown, and one of the closet plants will be moved to the sun. Can we make this plant thrive now that we've noticed it isn't being cared for? The third will remain in the closet.

Next, we'll make a connection between these plants and people. What do WE need to survive? What do we need to THRIVE?

I've put all these ideas and more into my newest activity package - The Heart Garden. You can take a look at the entire package in more detail HERE. I have started preparing some of the components for my classroom.

The posters turned out so beautifully, and the Heart Garden Challenge Cards are awesome! Take a closer look at them:

Each day, we will choose one of these challenge cards for students to have a focused goal for the day. In this way, they will learn about the sorts of things that a good friend will do for another person. These are designed to be double-sided. I put them together like this:

And finally displayed them in a cute little planter:

I am SO happy with how it turned out! The chosen challenge for the day will appear right in front!

There you have it! The basics of the Heart Garden Daily Challenge. Read more about this awesome character education program in this post: