On Wednesday, Dec. 13, Blue Creek Elementary School celebrated its third annual “One Smile Day.”

Each classroom teacher read the book One Smile by Cindy McKinley, which features a little girl who realized that by giving one smile to a man in the park initiated a chain of kindhearted events throughout her community.

After reading the book, teachers discussed the concept of kindness with their class and how it affects their daily lives. Each student was then asked to perform three acts of kindness: one at school, one at home, and one in the community. As the recipient of the kind act thanks the student, the student is asked to reply, “Instead of thanking me, please pass on acts of kindness to three other people.”

Like the book One Smile, the student’s one act of kindness should initiate a chain of kindness within the community.

In Ms. Kemp's fourth-grade classroom (photo shown above) students thought of acts of kindness that they did for someone in the past — or something that someone did for them. Some of the comments were, "Last night I was at Price Chopper and a girl dropped her bags, and I helped her pick them up;" "My grandmother took me out to ice cream;" "I cleaned the living room."

All students will record their acts of kindness on strips of paper, and then create a school-wide paper chain, which will be strung around the building.

This program was made possible by Blue Creek Elementary School’s School Success Team.