In a collaboration with local non-profit Let's Be Kind for Kindness Week, #TeamMoxie visited Killybrooke Elementary in Costa Mesa with one mission — to teach children the magical lesson of being kind to themselves.
On Wednesday, November 16, team members had the opportunity to visit students in 17 classrooms throughout the day in order to read Be Kind to Yourself, a book written by Moxie's founder & CEO Jeanette Knutti.
Set in an enchanted world, the story encourages social-emotional learning through the lens of the story's main character, Josh, a first-grade teacher. Through the aid of a beautiful fairy, Josh discovers and teaches his own students (and by extension the young readers) what it means to be kind to themselves and how they can practice doing so.
After reading the story, team members invited students in each class to share what they liked about themselves. Students eagerly raised their hands to share their answers. Sometimes they were the same things the children in the book shared, like liking their "hair," that they were a "good brother/sister" or that they had "lots of energy."
Even more exciting, however, the team often also witnessed students being inventive in identifying other traits they appreciated about themselves, like being "good at soccer" or the fact that they were "loving."
After reading the book, students were invited to complete an in-class activity and to later go online (with the help of a parent or guardian) to take a Kindness Pledge that the Moxie team created. By taking the pledge online, they would get the chance to get a real-life letter in the mail from the Kindness Fairy of the book, which got mailed out the next week.
The opportunity to get the letter from the Kindness fairy was also shared online via the Be Kind to Yourself Instagram page, which helped to expand the opportunity to children outside of just Orange County; in fact, its reach expanded as far as Scotland, where one child submitted their Kindness pledge!
We were so thrilled to see what an influence the book's message had in the classroom and look forward to sharing it with even more children in the future.
To learn more about Be Kind to Yourself, please visit: bekindtoyourselfbook.com.
To learn more about Kindness Week with Let's Be Kind, please visit: LetsBeKind.org.