Bucket Filling: A Tool for Building Positive Relationships

The idea of Bucket Filling comes from a lovely picture book called ‘Have You Filled a Bucket Today? A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids’ by Carol McCloud.

The concept from the book is the idea that everyone has an invisible bucket. When we do or say nice things to others we fill up their bucket and make them happy. But when we are mean or break the rules we are bucket dippers who take away from people’s bucket and make them sad.

Bucket Filling is an excellent concept to teach at all stages of primary school. The concept is easy for students to understand and they very quickly use the language and idea independently. I have used this concept since I started teaching and have found it has worked perfectly to monitor and promote positive behaviours. Many times I have heard students say to me ‘so and so was not being a bucket filler’ or ‘one of my friends shared their coloured pencils with me so they are being a bucket filler’. It is a great result when students can independently use a concept they have been taught.

In my classroom we have our own class bucket for ‘Bucket Fillers’ and a class bucket for ‘Bucket Dippers’. When students are showing me they are being bucket fillers I add some pebbles to the bucket. When students are being bucket dippers they lose pebbles and they go into the Bucket Dippers bucket. If students fill up the Bucket Fillers class bucket they are given a prize – for my class it is a free time afternoon. I also choose a Bucket Filler of the week and they receive a special Bucket Filling Certificate and they get to wear a silver glitter hat so everyone knows they are the Bucket Filler. I also have a class display about Bucket Filling to reinforce and remind students about being Bucket Fillers.

An age appropriate display is a must so as the teacher you can easily reinforce and guide students to this if they need to be reminded about what it means to be a bucket filler.

There are many great resources available from websites like Teacher Starter and Teach This. There are also some free resources on Google.