Experimenting With 7 Habits of Happy Kids

This post is all about yet another reason why I love the teacher blogging world!

While browsing on Pinterest all summer, I came across a very cool program: 7 Habits of Happy Kids. I instantly fell in love, especially with the very first habit of "Being Proactive"-- aaah, music to my teacher ears!

This program is under the larger umbrella of Leader in Me and was developed my the Coveys (of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People fame). This program features similar habits, but in more kid-friendly terms that are both concrete and effective- I {heart} them all! If you are a part of a Leader in Me/Lighthouse School, do you like this program school-wide? Please let me know in the comments below!

The 7 Habits of Happy Kids are:

1. Be proactive
2. Begin with the end in mind
3. Put first things first
4. Think win-win
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen the saw

Some of these may seem a bit odd at first, but the great thing is that each of them come with a tagline and also countless bullet points and descriptors that help kids (and teachers) address the many aspects of each habit.

There are sososososo many resources out there, and I wish I could include them all, but I will highlight a few here and also provide you with some of the links and tools that helped me the most. If you have more, please-pretty-please leave them in the comments! I am still so new to this program, I would love to add more to my collection!

Of course, if you have been reading my blog for a while, you know I am obsessed a fan of gestures with everything, so you can imagine my delight when I came across a YouTube video that put movement to each of these habits:


LOVE!

And then, of course, I had to make posters that fit these gestures (she uses language a bit different from the Covey's and I like it more-- for example, for Habit #4 "Think Win-Win", the original tagline is "Everyone can win", but she changes it to "I win, you win, we win") and included all of the taglines and descriptors:

 

These are available for FREE in both my TpT Store or on Google Docs.

There is also an accompanying book that is from the Coveys and tells the story of woodland animals showing (and not showing) the habits in their lives. It's a nice starting point and it does have some nice questions at the end of each story for parents, so using it as an at-home resource is a great idea!

Click to see it on Amazon

But, of course, the BESTEST of all resources come from teachers in blogland and TpT :)

Bridget of Little Lovely Leaders has ah-ma-zing resources-- I passed out her bookmarks on Parent Night so they could be in the know about the habits, we have used her sorts for each of the habits, and she has lots of ideas on her blog about how to implement these habits across the school year, including awards and classroom jobs.

The other resource I have loved using is from Jodi at Fun in First. She has a wonderful worksheet set in two versions for each of the habits that is a great way at the end to see if kids grasped what we learned, but also challenges them to come up with their own examples.

This is just the beginning of a program that I know must be incredible to use school-wide!! Even though I only use it in my classroom, I have seen a great improvement in how kids take responsibility and actually know what it means to have a plan and set goals, or be responsible and proactive. So that's the good news about this program- the lessons they teach are so universal, you can do it in your class and it doesn't conflict or usurp any other character ed program you school may be using.

I always try to reinforce the language of the habits when we do read-alouds or when I ask kids to "clip up" for taking initiative or thinking win-win, for example. I hang these posters in the back of our class along the bottom cabinets, as well as near our door with the habit we are focusing on for the week:

Click the picture to download for free from Google Docs

I will then hang the poster of the habit below so kids can see it as they come and go throughout the day. Lots of exposure never hurt, right?

There are so many more possibilities I would love explore both this year and going into next, like read alouds that continue to highlight the habits, more projects, and even role plays to help kids generate ideas and solutions to conflict using the habits as a guide. Leave any ideas in the comments and thank you so much in advance!

I will now leave you with a funny example of how kids can "Be Proactive"- I showed this to my group this year and we just laughed and laughed, all while yelling at the screen :)