Decorating our Buckets after Reading How Full is Your Bucket? for Kids by Rath
Planning our December's Activities was really fun, and you can find our December's Learning Plan Calendar here in this post or you can click the picture of the Calendar below for the FREE DOWNLOAD. 
The first on the list for me was to help drive home the concept of being kind towards each other and doing good deeds. I had seen this really awesome project somewhere on the web, with small buckets and gemstone water drops ?. We read the book How Full is Your Bucket? for Kids by Rath and they loved listening to this story! If you do not have this book, you can find it on YouTube where many people read it aloud to you.
I went to the dollar store and found some really cute buckets and blue gemstones, and blue gem stickers.I set it all up the night before, in place for them to wake up and come start at the table. This really made a huge difference and we actually did this project! So many times I have high hopes for a project and it falls flat because I pull it out midday and the kids have found interest in other things. My oldest daughter saw me setting it up that night and was super pumped about tomorrow's activity, she ran to bed to ? sleep fast.
The kids got straight to work adding stickers to their buckets and I was so impressed with their energy for this. They were ? happy.
We soon wanted to add a few more stickers so I grabbed the Christmas ? stickers I picked up as well along with some others like love that we use with our Sticker Rewards Charts and Weekly Subject Check Lists. " I love it when you plan these activities mommy" is what I hear from my oldest child in grade 2.I was very glad it went so well, and I do have another paper activity to review this concept again with coloring a bucket and writing suggestions for good deeds. You can find all these resources in my December's Learning Plan Calendar. This project, however, was not on that list, because I had not done it yet, and had a difficult time finding the other blog post where I had seen it done a while ago.
Our goal as a family is to use the water beads from this vase to add into their individual buckets when they catch the other being nice or doing a good deed or when mommy sees them doing a good thing.
As the month progresses I will be sharing our progress on this challenge we are doing on my Instagram Feed which you can come and check out!
What you will need to make this project
- Small buckets
- Plastic Blue Gemstones
- Stickers of all kinds
- Sharpies
- Ribbon if desired
- Foam stickers
- Large bucket or vase or jar for storing the gems to place into buckets as well as another container/jar/bucket to fill up will all the water gems from each child's bucket to finish the challenge.
Directions:Have your children decorate their buckets to their heart's desire
- Keep their buckets in a central area in the home, where it is easy for you to fill them up when you catch them "being good" or doing something nice and helpful.
- Place the main jars full of water gems close to the small buckets
Once the buckets are full, have the kids pour their water gems into the Mega Jar, or large container and see if it has gotten full. Once it is full, you can enjoy the reward you have chosen! Reward Ideas ~The Sky is the LimitOnce your kids fill up their individual buckets you could have a reward set in place for each child to enjoy.
- Choose a treasure from the treasure chest
- Movie night with popcorn at home
- Picnic (inside or outside depending on the season)
- A trip to the movie on a cheap night
- Any activity they enjoy doing with you. My kids have enjoyed rewards as simple as baking cookies with mommy. You can use simple one-on-one activities together or as a family, it could even be playing a game together.
- It could be extra time on the computer playing Minecraft or Roblox
- A gift card to use as Roblox Bucks, or at Toys r us for a 10$ toy.
- Whatever you are comfortable with doing and if it is a motivator for your children ? then you are winning.
If you are planning on filling up the Mega Jar with all of your full buckets, that reward could be larger, if you want too. 
We had so much fun this morning with our buckets, and the kids have been trying really hard to be helpful, mopping and cleaning up, saying sorry and listening better too. I hope you guys enjoyed this project we tried out! I'd love to hear if any of you have done this one before, or if you want to give it a try.