Fill a Bucket

We have been working with Callie and correcting her when she gets a little "too" silly.  She'll make up these nonsense words and then she'll say, "You're a coo coo head".  It's 100% harmless and she probably doesn't realize what she's doing, but the bottom line - she's name calling, and I won't have it! 

My very intelligent, wise, amazing friend, Lori had recently done an activity with several students in our school: Fill a Bucket.  Now I have read this story - well, a different version of this story, and love it.  Her version was for even younger children!  She lent me her book so I could bring it home to read with Callie :)

This book does a great job of explaining how to treat others and how it makes them feel.  It talks about the "imaginary bucket" we all carry around with us.  When we do nice things for other people, we fill their bucket.  When we do things that are hurtful, we empty their bucket.  In return, our bucket is either filled or emptied.

 Callie (like many toddlers) is very concrete and needs a visual.  So we went to Target and bought (in their dollar section) 5 "buckets".  I wrote everyone's name on theirs (except mine, but mine says, "Good moms have messy kitchens, laundry piles, and happy kids").  We started out with 5 "flowers" in our buckets.  We learned right away that Callie needs to have HER bucket filled.  So when she does something nice or is a wonderful listener, we not only fill our bucket (because it made us feel good), but we fill her bucket as well.

So far it has been working!  She listens very well and is really involved in filling our buckets.  She gets very sad if we even talk about having to take flowers out of our buckets.  Hopefully this will continue!

Looks like Doc McStuffins is enjoying mom's special fruit smoothy :)  Yummy!!!