Almost all children love recess, but for some children, if they feel like they don’t have anyone to play with, it can also be a stressful time. That is why a little girl from Southern Indiana named Peyton Jones decided she would take matters into her own hands, to make sure no one at her school, New Washington Elementary, would be left out.
Peyton, who is 8-years-old, says that when she noticed not everyone had a friend, she felt like, “I want them to have somebody to play with. I don’t want them to feel like (they are alone).” Luckily, Peyton’s mom had recently told her about something called a “Buddy Bench,” and Peyton decided that New Washington Elementary needed to get with the program.
“When you don’t have anybody to sit with on the playground, you sit on the Buddy Bench, and other kids come over and ask if you want to play with them,” explains Peyton, about what a Buddy Bench is. The concept allows all kids to have a way to fit in, and feel more included. Sometimes going up to someone and asking them to play can be intimidating, so the idea of just having to sit on a bench to make friends is very appealing to many kids.
New Washington teacher Heather Barry is a big fan of the benches, saying, “Especially once you get to 2nd, 3rd grade, that’s really when you start seeing a lot of that in the unkindness and the way they’re treating — it might not be bullying, but it’s being unkind to each other, so it’s a great time to start.”
Although Peyton had a great idea with bringing a Buddy Bench to her school, it wouldn’t be easy, as the bench would cost 500 dollars, and the school couldn’t afford it. Peyton though is extremely engineering. She made a business called “Peyton’s Creations,” where she made and sold sugar scrubs, and she put that money towards her Buddy Bench project.
Her business was successful beyond her wildest imagination. She had estimated she would sell 50 sugar scrubs and set out with that number as her goal, but by the time she was done, she had orders for over 200 of them. She not only raised the money for the Buddy Bench, but her hard work and perseverance inspired her schools principal so much, that the principal matched all the money Peyton put in, and the school was able to get not one, but two Buddy Benches.
Teachers are saying that the Buddy Benches are already making a huge difference at the school, and Peyton’s kindness is now inspiring not just her community, but people across the world, with news stories about her and the Buddy Benches, now appearing all over the world wide web.
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Source: WDRB
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