PORT ORCHARD — In Patty Pace’s second-grade classroom at South Colby Elementary, basic life lessons are shared — and reinforced — through simple, but effective, teaching techniques that help embed the concepts of kindness and compassion into a child’s mind, hopefully for a lifetime.

Pace has demonstrated this by reading from a book called “Each Kindness.” It’s simplistic enough to register with second-graders but the message is significant enough that it envelopes each student in a meaningful, almost literal way.

“In the story, the teacher has a bowl with water and pebbles,” Pace said of the lesson. “Each student drops a pebble in the bowl and says something they can do that spreads kindness to others. It spreads like the ripples in the water when the pebble drops in the bowl.

“It was a fun activity that I did with this group of students since they exhibited the true meaning of kindness each day. So, I decided to take a picture of them by the ‘kindness rocks’.”

The true test results of this lesson, however, came from the real-life stories that Pace’s students shared with her.

“My favorite part was after the lesson,” the second-grade teacher noted. “I would have students come up and tell me about the kindness other students showed them.

“I loved it!”