Bucket Filler

About this resource

Bucket filler activities, in pictures. A student has a bucket that holds good feelings. Kind acts fill it, unkind acts empty it, and every day there is a chance to fill one. This is a short picture story a student can turn like a book, cards to sort kind acts from unkind acts, and a bucket to color a drop at a time. It comes with the log that writes down what happened, so bucket filling does not stay a nice idea on a bulletin board.

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 31 pages

• An 8-page picture story, "My Bucket": one big picture and one short sentence on each page, a "My name" line and one instruction at the top of every page
• The whole story on one black-and-white page, for the photocopier
• 12 sort cards in full color, cut apart 4 across and 3 down so each cut is one straight line: 6 kind acts (share, help, say thanks, invite, smile, clean up) and 6 unkind acts (grab, mean words, leave out, laugh at, ignore, yell), each with a picture, a word and a short line
• The same 12 sort cards in black-and-white ink-saver
• A sort mat: "Fills my bucket" and "Empties my bucket", two big piles for the cards
• 8 "A Kind Act I Did" cards: the student draws a picture and writes the words on type-in lines
• My Bucket: a big bucket with 12 drops to color, one for each kind act
• A five-day bucket tracker, 6 drops a day, with a line for the kind act
• A how-to page, with the answer key for the sort cards
• A Kind Acts Log (20 rows: date, what happened in your words, card word, kind act yes or no, initials)
• A weekly roll-up (8 weeks) with a percent graph
• A filled example: an invented student, one week on the log, three weeks on the roll-up and the acts counted across all three
• A family page with six small kind-act cards to cut apart and a note home
• A hand-off page so a paraprofessional or another classroom uses the bucket the same way
• A phrase bank: 23 lines in 6 groups (spoken lines for the story and the cards, written starters for the log, the roll-up and the note home)
• A storage and binder label sheet: 12 labels and a spine strip
• Start Here, a contents page with page thumbnails, and a "what's next" back page

The Sort Cards And The Bucket

Twelve pictured cards the student sorts into two piles: kind acts that fill a bucket and unkind acts that empty one. Then the student colors a drop on the bucket page or the five-day tracker for each kind act, and draws and writes a "kind act I did" card of their own.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: type into the name lines, the log, the roll-up, the family page, the hand-off page and the kind act cards, or print and use a pen. It works offline with no account or subscription. It is NOT an editable online slideshow or word-processor document.

Who This Is For

Teachers of grades K-4, special education teachers and paraprofessionals who want a calm, concrete picture story about kind acts, counselors, case managers who need it to show up as data, and the families who get the home page.

More In The Collection

This set is in the Visual Supports Collection, alongside Social Stories: Using Kind Words and Actions, Social Stories: When Someone Is Unkind to Me, Social Story: It's OK to Make a Mistake and Sticker Chart. Free to try first: Visual Supports Starter Set FREE.

Pictures (color pages): Noto Emoji by Google, Apache License 2.0. Pictures (ink-saver pages): Fluent Emoji, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, MIT License.