Kindness of Our Heart takes home top rating at Kindness Fair
Courtesy photo The Kindness of Our Hearts project took home the Kellogg School District’s lone “superior” rating at the annual Kindness Fair. Pictured (from left) are Tristan Baker, Mackayla Camacho, Mrs. Pooler, Mattix Harris, Dakota Camacho, Kloie Neace and Miss Loudon. Not pictured are Mathew Best and Zoey O’Hara-Mason.
KELLOGG — The Kellogg Kindness Project wrapped up recently and was once again a collective success for the students of Kellogg Middle School.
Of the many projects that were presented only one came away with the coveted “Superior” rating.
The Kindness of Our Heart (KOH) was a project that consisted of five KMS students along with two project advisers, where the students planned out activities to do with the residents of Mountain Valley of Cascadia.
Mountain Valley is a skilled nursing facility where the residents don’t get young visitors very often.
As part of the KOH project, the students visited the facility on four different occasions, each time with a new project for them to do together.
The activities varied in nature, but some days it was board games, others it was crafting, but always included heavy amounts of social interaction.
“We spent a lot of time preparing each week for our visit,” KMS teacher and project adviser Terry Loudon said. “We were able to add so many different elements to our project. It really came together nicely.”
The project emphasized working with the residents at Mountain Valley, but they also took time to promote kindness in their own school, which included working with the after-school program to make Valentine’s Day cards, as well as putting posters promoting kindness up in the school.
“We wanted to encourage others to be kind too,” Loudon said. “We were really starting to feel the kindness and we wanted to spread it around.”
The projects have other components too, things like preparing a visual display and verbal presentation, which they present to a panel of judges who then score the projects at the Kindness Fair.
Although the project may be over, the KOH project is far from ending.
“We had kids really blossom and come out of their shells during this project who don’t want to see it come to an end,” Loudon said. “We plan on going to Mountain Valley once a week for the rest of the third quarter.”