Kikori May SEL Calendar
Updated: May 5
The Kikori SEL Calendar is here to help you move through May with exactly what your students need: reflection, growth mindset, appreciation and reframing!
The month of May has the opportunity to serve as a catalyst for your students' growth—a time when you as an educator plays a pivotal role in shaping your students' mindsets, fostering a sense of appreciation, and guiding them through the process of reflection and reframing.
“Once an experience has occurred, what has actually happened becomes frozen in the past; however the interpretation of the occurrence is still fluid and changeable.”
Stephen Bacon, The Unconscious Use of Metaphor in Outward Bound (1983)
Our May SEL Calendar provides you with daily experiential social emotional learning (eSEL) activities accessed via the Kikori platform that you can lead with your students. From state testing to end-of-year celebrations and field trips, let's end the year on a high note!
Here’s what that our eSEL Calendar provide you with EVERY DAY:
Start your day with a Morning Message or Advisory Announcement
Practice those ever-important social skills with Greeting Activity
Encourage connection with a Sharing or Acknowledging Activity
Facilitate an interactive National Day Activity (i.e. Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day, National Ice Cream Day, World Kindness Day, etc.)
Flex essential muscles with our Day-of-the-Week Activities for Mindful Monday, Together Tuesday, Wellness Wednesday, Thoughtful Thursday and Fun Friday
BONUS: Looking to help your students build critical social emotional skills? Each of Kikori's activities are aligned to CASEL's Social Emotional Learning standards, 21st Century Skills and Sustainable Development Skills!
Ready to get started?
Download May SEL Calendar Weeks 1-2 For FREE Below
May Elementary SEL Calendar
Middle & High School Advisory SEL Calendar
PLUS, check out the great resources that bring the Kikori eSEL Calendar to life!
4 Important Practices to Help Your Students End the Year on High Note:
Reflection is the practice of looking back on the journey of this school year, both academically and personally to foster self-awareness and cultivate a deeper understanding of one's capabilities and potential. You can help your students reflect by:
Providing opportunities for students to journal or write about their achievements, challenges, and lessons learned.
Facilitating class discussions where students can share their reflections on their progress and experiences.
Helping students set goals for the future based on their reflections, identifying areas for improvement and strengths to build upon.
A growth mindset is the belief that intelligence and abilities are not fixed and can be developed over time. You can help your students exercise their growth mindset by:
Praising students for their hard work, strategies, and progress rather than solely focusing on outcomes.
Teaching students about the brain's ability to grow and change through practice and learning.
Encouraging students to embrace challenges as opportunities for growth and to view mistakes as valuable learning experiences.
Providing constructive feedback that promotes a growth mindset, highlighting areas for improvement while also acknowledging progress and effort.
Appreciation means recognizing one another's dedication, creativity, and unique contributions. You can help your students practice giving and receiving appreciation by:
Taking time to recognize and celebrate students' achievements, both big and small.
Writing personalized notes or cards to students expressing gratitude for their hard work and positive attitudes.
Involving students in expressing appreciation for each other through activities.
Creating opportunities for students to share what they appreciate about each other, fostering a supportive and inclusive classroom community.
Reframing is the practice of embracing setbacks as valuable learning experiences and challenging negative self-talk. During May you can help your students practice reframing by:
Helping students reframe challenges or setbacks as opportunities for learning and growth.
Encouraging students to look at situations from different perspectives and consider alternative interpretations.
Teaching students how to challenge negative self-talk and replace it with more positive and empowering thoughts.
Sharing stories or examples of individuals who have overcome adversity through resilience and positive thinking.
Utilizing Kikori's eSEL Calendar will provide you with activities to support students in reflecting, cultivating a growth mindset, appreciating and reframing their past year to learn and grow.
Would you like May's full SEL calendar?
Are you an individual educator? Sign up for Kikori Premium!
For the price of one Teacher's Pay Teacher's printable, gain access to an entire month of curated, research-backed activities! Premium memberships include access to daily Morning Meeting slides (now for K-2 AND grades 3-5!), downloadable activity printables and access to a library of playlists designed to support student outcomes aligned with SEL Standards and 21st Century Skills!
Are you and other educators in your school using Kikori? Sign up for the Kikori School-wide Solution!
Kikori's School-wide Solution provides all educators in your school with access to Kikori's platform including extra school-wide bonuses like Morning Meeting customizable slides, school-wide sharing and communication, staff training on trauma-informed eSEL best practices on community-building and so much more!
Would you like to learn more about the research-backed practices built into Kikori's eSEL Calendar?
How does Kikori ensure these activities build social emotional skills like self-awareness and relationship skills?
Each activity provides you with instructions that follow Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle. This means the activities help youth actively engage and then provides reflection questions related to the activity.
These questions help youth reflect and build self- and social-awareness (what happened during the activity?), make meaningful connections to their own lives (how did what happened during the activity connect to other experiences?), and engage in personal growth (what are they going to take from this activity into their lives?)
Daily National Day 10-min Prop-free Activities
At Kikori, we think it's important to educate our students on important days of the year and learn what they stand for. To make team building in the classroom or at youth development programs MEANINGFUL and RELEVANT, we've included a special National Holiday for every day and a corresponding team building activity. The National Days are specially curated for a mix of important moments in history; STEM learning related to math and science; days related to well-being; and some days Just for FUNN!
Kikori's Day-of-the-week Activities
Each day, the SEL Calendar provides you with an activity focused on the following daily Kikori themes:
Mindful Monday activities include meditations, visualizations and mindfulness
Together Tuesday activities involve team building and initiatives that build trust
Wellness Wednesday activities focus on ways to build physical and emotional health
Thoughtful Thursday activities use problem solving and reflection to help grow inward
Fun Friday activities are energizing activities that reinforce the importance of joy
How to Use Your Monthly eSEL Calendar:
How easy is it? Just click the activity!
All of the Planners are CLICKABLE to take you straight into the national days and Kikori activities in the Kikori platform! The Elementary and Advisory calendars share a monthly theme, and activities within the two clickable calendars are specially catered to that age range. If you want to specify for your student grade further, click on the correct grade level variation within the activity! We also encourage you to explore “Variations” offered within individual Kikori activities.
How to Kikori:
What is your favorite activity to play in May with your students? Let us know in the comments below - and we can help you add it into the Kikori platform!
