The Wrinkled Heart

For the 1st grade lesson on Kindness, we learned about wrinkled hearts. I saw this poem somewhere online (I can't remember where) and thought it was just so cute. I changed the words around a bit to fit with our kindness theme, so our poem read: Before you speak, be kind from the start, because it's hard to mend a wrinkled heart. I brought in two paper hearts, one blank one and one with the poem written on it. We discussed the different ways that people can be unkind and with each example, I added a fold, or wrinkle, to the blank paper heart. When we were finished discussing examples of unkindness, the heart did not resemble a heart anymore and was very creased. In order to unfold it, the students had to come up with ways to resolve the unkindness. With each idea, I unfolded the heart until it was back to its original shape. The heart, however, still showed signs of being wrinkled. We talked about how even apologies cannot take away the wrinkles of unkindness. After our discussion, each student was given a small paper heart with the poem printed on it as a reminder to be kind.