Big Cause for Little Kids

Eight students from Singapore Management Univeristy (SMU) did more than just submit a project report to their teacher; they are on their way to change lives of pre-school children around Singapore.

The team of students, who calls themelves KINDle, started a project called Project Kind Kids, with the objective of instilling kindness, graciousness and courtesy among pre-school children through a fun and interactive educational package.

Why pre-school children?

The team has always had a preconception that children at a very young age can learn better than older children. After doing a survey with 268 respondents, they found out that 80% felt that kindness should be taught below 7 years old and that 98% believes that kindness during childhood should be reinforced.

As SKM's Chairman, Mr Koh Poh Tiong, had said, "Pre-school should mark the beginning of values education, as it is the period where children are most imperssionable and receptive to teachings."

Resource Package

The materials include videos, songs, and activity worksheets - all planned and prepared by the team.

Songs

Believing that nursery rhymes normally help in a child's development and learning experience, the team has created two songs namely, 'Helping Hand' and 'Thank You Song'.

Here are their lyrics:

Helping Hand

We are kind to everybody

Give a smile, everyday

Can we help you with our troubles

Don't be sad, we are here

We will help you, yes we will

We love to lend a helping hand
We will try our very best
To brighten up your lovely day

Thank You Song

My mother takes care of me

What should I say?

THANK YOU

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for taking care of me!

We are happy to be kind

My friend shares cookie with me

What should I say?

THANK YOU

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for sharing your cookie!

We are happy to be kind

My teacher teaches me

What should I say?

THANK YOU
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for teaching ABC!
We are happy to be kind

Play the Thank You Song here!

Videos

Four videos were produced, which show four typical scenes that most pre-school children can relate to. According to KINDle, who acted and edited all four, the videos 'form the backbone of (the) whole curriculum'. Find a couple of them at our website.

The videos show scenes from school, the public, home and playground.

Activity Sheets

Activities were prepared for students to do concurrently with the videos.

Launch

On 12 March, 2010, Project Kind Kids was launched at PCF Telok Blangah Centre. At the same time, the event also served as a pilot project targeted to school children and teachers, whom the team would get feedback from.

The video on Kindness at School was first screened, and was later followed by role-playing by the team which taught greetings, reenactment of a scene from the video where students can take part, and a sing-along session of the Thank You Song. The students were also taught steps which they happily danced along to.

The whole event ended with a fun photo-taking session with Singa. Here are some launch event pictures from the team's blog.

Sustainability

To sustain the project in the long term, SKM will help in distributing the resources. We will approach pre-schools around Singapore and inform them about the package. We will also be soon uploading all the resources on their blog.

KINDle's members are Tam Chi Hang Alex, Eve Law Yifu, Wong Hong Wei, Jean Koh Su Ern, Lazatin Pablo Benedicto IV Cid, Mario Renaldo, Heng Guan Lek Melvin, and Yeo Yong Han Nicholas.

Well done, KINDle team! :)