School Ditches Homework for 'Acts of Kindness'

No times tables, no spelling, no weird make a dinosaur project – a primary school in Ireland has replaced homework with acts of kindness.

For the entire month of December, the students at Gaelscoil Mhichíl Uí Choileáin school in County Cork will perform acts of kindness for their friends, family and community. The school asked the children to record their loving acts in a Kindness Diary, which parents will sign.

The school has also initiated a system where the children write kind notes about each other. Teachers read the notes read aloud at the weekly assembly. Each class will also come up with a project that will help the local community.

Why they did it

It’s the third year in a row the school has run the kindness month. In a post on Facebook the school wrote:

“In this world, consumed by social media, where our young people are constantly experiencing pressure, there is no better way to show them the way forward in the world than by practising kindness. We all know that helping others makes us feel good about ourselves… What’s not to love about that?!? That feel-good factor we experience form helping others cannot be quantified.

Our message to the children is very simple: they can be the reason somebody smiles today and they can definitely help make this world a better place for others and for themselves.”

mum central — Children at a primary school in Ireland will organise projects that help their community. Photo: BigStock

Suggested acts of kindness include:

Visiting/phoning/sending a Christmas card to an elderly neighbour or relative who may be lonely
Helping out with household chores at home
Undertaking random acts of kindness to brighten the lives of those around them and make somebody’s day a better one
An act of self-care to promote self-esteem and positivity
Spending some time doing something they love which makes them feel good about themselves

We think this is a brilliant idea! Well done Ireland.