Who else is swooning over all things cactus? I’m sure by now you’ve all seen the cactus classroom obsession. Isn’t it just about the cutest thing EVER? I mean HEL-LO CUTENESS!
One of the many things that I love to teach during the first few weeks of school is our classroom climate + kindness + how we are going to treat each other. This is such an important thing to establish right off the bat. Like SO important! There are so many amazing books out there to use when teaching this. Here are some great ones.
//Those Shoes // Strictly No Elephants // The Jelly Donut Difference // Have You Filled a Bucket Today? // Stick and Stone // The Invisible Boy // Each Kindness // Kindness is Cooler, Mrs. Ruler // The Kindness Quilt//
With all the cactus craze going on right now, I thought it would be fun to use that same theme for a management system to implement kindness in the classroom throughout the year.
When a student is showing kindness, they get to add a clothespin (the sharp spines) to the classroom cactus. As the teacher, you can set up a goal for the class….add 5 spines in a week, get 10 spines in a month….whatever is do-able for your classroom. You could even have a reward once the class meets their goal…extra recess, shoes off for the day, popsicles, etc.
I used wrapping paper and these templates to create the cactus board.
After reading one of the read alouds above, students can make these cacti and write about how they can show kindness in the classroom and to their friends. Students can display their cactus around the large cactus bulletin board as a reminder of ways that they can add clothespins to the class cactus.
Another fun way to display cacti in the classroom is for each student to celebrate their uniqueness and write about how they are “on point”.
Or celebrate how their classroom is “on point” with this flip book…
Or show off how their grade level is “on point”.
All of these cacti templates are available here.
Goodness gracious, I just can’t get enough of the cactus cuteness.