The School of Play Curriculum
Primary School Grade 3 & 4
Week Thirteen centres on strengthening social connection, kindness, and physical fitness through a mix of high-energy games and reflective activities. Students begin the week with lively, relationship-building experiences such as Circle Swap, where they learn about their peers through quick sharing and movement. These activities create a fun, inclusive environment that encourages students to engage, listen, and build a sense of belonging. The focus on kindness is woven throughout the week, offering students purposeful moments to reflect on the impact of their actions and the role kindness plays in fostering a positive classroom community.
Alongside social and emotional learning, Week Thirteen integrates meaningful physical challenges to help students build endurance, resilience, and confidence. Games like Dice We Go push students to set small fitness goals, track their progress, and encourage one another as they work through repeated exercises. Reflection activities such as the Acts of Kindness Tracker and the Kindness Memory Match give students space to share personal stories, practise empathy, and recognise how kindness strengthens relationships. By combining movement, connection, and meaningful reflection, Week Thirteen helps students grow socially, emotionally, and physically while developing habits that positively influence themselves and those around them.
Weekly Lessons
Circle Swap
Circle Swap is an energetic and social warm-up game where students learn each other’s names and personal facts while staying physically active. The game begins with one student standing in the centre of a circle, introducing themselves and sharing a personal fact. Anyone in the circle who can relate to the fact must jump, shout “Me too!” with their name, and sprint across the circle to swap spots. This creates fast-paced movement, laughter, and multiple opportunities to practise name recall, personal sharing, and active listening. With each turn, a new person steps into the centre, helping students learn more about their classmates in a fun, low-pressure way.
The physical component keeps the game lively and engaging, while the constant swapping of roles builds confidence, belonging, and positive social interactions. Students practise recalling names, respecting each other’s contributions, and connecting through shared experiences. Teachers can rotate different exercises each minute, jumps, squats, push-ups, or squat jumps, to increase the fitness element and add variety. Circle Swap is an ideal class starter, energiser, or community-builder that strengthens social bonds, promotes movement, and creates an inclusive environment where every student feels seen, heard, and known.
Respectful Relationships
Communication and Social Skills
This activity supports students to:
- Learn, remember, and confidently use peers’ names, building trust, belonging, and stronger social connections.
- Communicate respectfully, sharing personal facts clearly and listening actively to others during each turn.
- Engage in positive social interactions, practising turn-taking, speaking confidently, and acknowledging similarities with peers.
Emotional Literacy & Personal Strengths
Through this activity, students learn to:
- Recognise and share personal qualities and experiences, building self-awareness and confidence.
- Identify similarities and differences between themselves and others, helping them appreciate diversity within their class.
- Express themselves positively, sharing facts that reflect their interests, experiences, and identity.
Positive Relationships, Empathy & Inclusion
This activity helps students:
- Recognise commonalities that create connection, understanding how shared experiences strengthen friendships.
- Show empathy and inclusion, celebrating similarities while also respecting peers whose experiences differ.
- Build a welcoming and supportive environment, encouraging every student to participate, listen, and feel valued.
Acts of Kindness Tracker
Acts of Kindness Tracker is a reflective and heart-centred activity designed to help students recognise the impact of their everyday actions. Throughout the week, students pay attention to moments where they showed kindness, big or small, and record these moments in their personal “Kindness Tracker.” By writing about who they helped, how it made them feel, and how the other person responded, students learn to understand the emotional ripple effect of kindness. This process encourages empathy, strengthens social awareness, and helps students recognise the positive role they can play in their school, home, and community.
The activity also empowers students to plan ahead by setting kindness goals for the week. They identify at least three acts of kindness they intend to complete, track their progress, and reflect on how kindness shapes relationships and strengthens a supportive classroom culture. By the end of the week, students walk away with a deeper understanding of why kindness matters and how they can continue to incorporate caring behaviours into their everyday lives. This simple, meaningful activity fosters emotional growth, gratitude, and a classroom community built on respect and compassion.
Respectful Relationships
Positive Relationships, Empathy & Inclusion
This activity supports students to:
- Recognise how their actions affect others, understanding the emotional impact kindness can have in friendships and groups.
- Develop empathy by reflecting on how others may have felt when receiving kindness.
- Strengthen relationships through deliberate acts of care, support, and helpfulness toward peers, family, and community members.
Emotional Literacy & Self-Awareness
Through this activity, students learn to:
- Identify their emotions before and after performing acts of kindness, developing emotional awareness.
- Reflect on the positive feelings associated with helping others, reinforcing self-worth and confidence.
- Understand the personal benefits of kindness, including feeling proud, happy, or connected.
Personal Strengths & Help-Seeking
This activity helps students:
- Recognise kindness as a personal strength, understanding that their actions can improve the well-being of others.
- Practise planning positive behaviours, identifying opportunities to perform acts of kindness across the week.
- Build habits of kindness, learning that daily positive actions contribute to a safe and supportive class culture.
Dice We Go
Dice We Go is a high-energy movement game that mixes fitness, chance, and challenge to keep players fully engaged. Using dice to determine the number of repetitions for a series of exercises, participants work through progressively harder rounds, pushing their physical limits with each roll. The game blends structured exercise with unpredictability, building endurance, resilience, and a sense of achievement as players complete each round and test their stamina. With running built into every round, the activity keeps the heart rate high and the energy levels even higher.
As the rounds increase in difficulty, players must stay focused, pace themselves, and support those around them. Whether played individually, in pairs, or small teams, the game promotes fitness, perseverance, and personal growth. The sense of challenge combined with the randomness of the dice adds excitement and motivates players to keep going. Dice We Go is perfect for PE classes, fitness circuits, or energising group sessions, a brilliant way to build strength, endurance, and teamwork in a fun, dynamic workout experience.
Respectful Relationships
Cooperation, Encouragement & Positive Peer Support
This activity helps students:
- Work positively alongside classmates, encouraging one another through increasingly difficult rounds.
- Celebrate effort, recognising their peers’ persistence and supporting others during challenging exercises.
- Build a safe, inclusive fitness environment, where everyone participates at their own level and feels valued.
Emotional Regulation & Personal Strengths
Through this game, students learn to:
- Recognise their strengths by pushing through physical challenges and noticing improvements over time.
- Manage emotions such as frustration or fatigue, using positive self-talk to keep going.
- Show resilience, demonstrating determination and self-belief as exercises become more demanding.
Help-Seeking, Problem-Solving & Self-Management
This activity encourages students to:
- Ask for help or clarification when unsure about an exercise or sequence, promoting healthy help-seeking behaviours.
- Manage their own pace and choices, making decisions about effort, form, and strategy.
- Take responsibility for their fitness goals, tracking rounds, repetitions, and progress with honesty and accuracy.
Kindness Memory Match
Kindness Memory Match is a reflective and collaborative twist on the classic memory card game, designed to help students explore the many ways kindness shows up in their lives. As players flip over pairs of cards, they answer kindness-focused questions that encourage them to recall real moments where they gave or received kindness. This gentle structure invites meaningful self-reflection and emotional awareness, helping students deepen their understanding of empathy, gratitude, and the positive impact their actions have on others.
The game also promotes rich social connection, as players listen to each other’s stories, celebrate meaningful moments, and work cooperatively to remember card locations and match pairs. Whether played individually, in teams, or as a whole class, Kindness Memory Match creates a warm and supportive atmosphere where kindness becomes visible, spoken, and shared. By the end of the game, students not only develop better memory and communication skills but also walk away with stronger relationships and a deeper appreciation of the kindness woven through their everyday experiences.
Download the ten kindness memory tiles HERE.
Respectful Relationships
Cooperation, Communication & Positive Peer Interaction
This activity helps students:
- Share personal stories and experiences in a safe, supportive environment while playing a collaborative memory game.
- Communicate respectfully, taking turns, listening actively, and encouraging others as they answer their kindness-related questions.
- Work together to create a positive group atmosphere, promoting teamwork and strengthening class connections.
Empathy, Emotional Understanding & Perspective-Taking
Through this game, students learn to:
- Recognise and appreciate others' experiences of kindness, broadening their understanding of diverse emotions and actions.
- Listen with empathy, showing care and understanding as their peers share meaningful reflections.
- Reflect on their feelings, gaining greater awareness of how kindness impacts themselves and those around them.
Personal Strengths, Kindness & Building Wellbeing
This activity encourages students to:
- Identify their own kind actions, increasing self-awareness and reinforcing positive behaviour.
- Celebrate strengths in themselves and others, acknowledging kindness as a personal power that builds healthy relationships.
- Understand how kindness creates belonging, helping students see how small acts contribute to a supportive and respectful class community.
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