Promoting Acts of Kindness through joining in World Smile Day

The first Friday in October every year is world smile day, this day promote acts of kindness to make at least one person smile. When the first ever smiley face image was created it was believed that the image of smile held no limitations and boundaries such as political influence, norms, and values, languages or cultures and that everyone regardless of who they were would feel lightened and inspired by the image of the smiling face.

This is a great day to promote and take part in within early years settings, and can also be linked in with every day practice and promoting British Values. Children within the early years can sometimes find it difficult to always be kind to others due to the ages and stages of children and the egocentric stage that they all pass through. This makes it incredibly important that children are taught how to be kind and reminded of this whenever necessary. Being kind should be a standard golden rule held by any early years setting and what better way to promote kindness for a whole day then taking part in world smile day.

Taking part in world smile day will help promote development in many areas of the EYFS, support self-esteem and create positivity across the setting.

What are the benefits?

The benefits of taking part in the ethos of world smile day are:

• Boost esteem of the children giving and receiving acts of kindness
• Support and promote behaviour management of children as they learn that being kind to others is important
• Promote skills such as sharing, turn taking, kind words, sharing feelings and learning about emotions
• Make your own smiley face pictures using either Art resources, messy play or ICT and promote the EYFS while doing so
• Use it as an opportunity to build parent partnerships and show gestures of kindness towards them such as creating small gifts with the children or holding a cake sale
• Spread happiness
• Use this as a day to boost morale and promote positive atmosphere within the setting
• Add evidence of joining in this day to your Ofsted evidence folder display all the benefits it has had
• Use this day to connect with the wider community and display act of kindness and spread happiness for example by creating and delivering things to local food banks or completing activities in local nursing homes.
• Promote British Values such as mutual respect and tolerance by being kind to everyone!

All in all this day is great for spreading happiness and having fun and early years settings have much to gain by participating in a day to make everyone they see a smile.