You’re probably familiar with the Elf on the Shelf craze. He’s a little elf who helps Santa with his naughty/nice list by watching kids and reporting back to Santa on their behavior. At night, the elf magically comes alive and kids wake up in the morning to find him in a new spot, sometimes in a pretty elaborate setting.

We liked that the Elf on the Shelf brings fun to a home or classroom, but we didn’t like the idea of teaching our students that they could be either naughty or nice. We wanted to encourage our students to be kind to their peers and preform random acts of kindness during the holiday season.

So, we introduced a new character. The Mischievous Moose.

Our little moose friend is quite the troublemaker! The first day he arrived in our classroom, he really destroyed it. There was stuff everywhere. Our kids were surprised when they walked in the room and saw the mess. Luckily he showed up with a note that told us he had been a little too mischievous and needed to learn kindness from us before he could return to his home in Moosetopia. We discussed that he would be watching and learning from us. From that moment on, our students were up for the task of helping the moose learn to be kind.

We helped our students create a kindness book to help teach our moose how to be kind. Every student created a page for our book. We also made a paper chain of kindness where students could write on a strip of paper anytime they performed an act of kindness. At the end of each day, we passed out strips of paper to add to our chain. We noticed that when some students struggled to think of something to write, another student would remind them of kind acts they had done that day.

Just like the Elf on the Shelf, every day after school, we moved him to a new location in the classroom. Depending on what happened that day in class, we would decide if he had learned a positive or negative behavior. For example, one day we had an indoor recess because it was too cold to go out. The students played really well together that day, so the next morning, they found the moose sitting with a bunch of other stuffed animals and a note that mentioned that he had watched them play together and decided it looked like fun to have some new friends, just like they did.

Another day the students left a bunch of pencils out everywhere. The next morning, they found the moose had dumped pencils all over the room. He left a note that said, “I see that you like having pencils out everywhere, so I decided to help!” Of course they learned quickly, so they were very careful that day to pick up after themselves so they could show the moose a better example. The next day the moose had replaced all of their pencils with special holiday pencils. They’re second graders, so of course this was about as exciting as it gets!

At the end of the week, our class presented the moose with our book about kindness and read all of the kind acts from the paper chain. And of course, the moose learned how to be kind and got to return to Moosetopia. Before he left, he even gifted our class with his own book of kindness titled, Moose’s Guide to Kind. It was a fun activity! We will definitely do it again next year, and we are sure that our kids will remember teaching kindness to their special moose visitor.