A bulletin board in the foyer of Salem School overflowed with colorful paper hearts, trailing into windows and a stairwell. During the week of Feb. 8, drawings and paper hearts filled with tales of helping others showcased the kindness that comes naturally to students and staff at the school.

The week’s theme was “A Kind Heart is a Healthy Heart,” and it gave students an opportunity to think about ways to be kind to others, which is a motto of Principal Joan Phillips.

Assistant Principal Kim Fentress said the idea came after the school’s third annual fall festival, which is run annually by the eighth-grade students. She wanted to do a winter festival as well, but the weather forced them to come up with an inside activity, which became a full week dedicated to heart health and kindness, coordinated by the unified arts teachers.

“They’re celebrating this week with kindness but it could be celebrated all the time the way that everyone treats everyone else here,” Fentress said. During her first weeks as assistant principal at Salem School in January, she received a folder full of welcome notes from all the fifth-grade students.

Students are actively engaged in community service and fundraising efforts, including projects to support St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, the Waterford Country School and Salem resident Brynn Levitsky, who at age 5 is battling cancer for the third time.

At the beginning of the week, students were sent home with two paper hearts to write down acts of kindness that they did, or ones that someone else did for them. Eighth-grader Jacqui Silveira said her sister Jordyn wrote about how she shoveled the deck without being asked. Other students shared stories of lending items to friends or getting help from relatives on school projects.

The main entrance of the school was decorated with 361 hearts, or about one per student. A food drive conducted during the week also collected more than 250 canned goods to donate to the East Lyme food pantry.

Teachers continued the theme around the school with heart-related activities in class, and some classes also set up bulletin boards for their own random acts of kindness, including a large display of thumb print hearts to thank the custodial staff for their work.

At the end of the week, each grade went to the gym for an hour for heart healthy playtime. Technology education teacher Sue Bennett, who helped coordinate the week, said the students also were being kind to their own hearts after a week of being kind to others.

While the younger grades had stations for dancing and other games, older students participated in “Heart Power Bingo,” in which groups rotated around the gym to shoot baskets, catch dodgeballs while jump roping, and other heart-healthy activities. Eighth-grade students were on-hand in all shifts to help younger students.

Riley Morrow and Trent Lundgren helped lead some of the stations alongside Silveira, and while Morrow and Silveira enjoyed the basketball-based activities, Lundgren just enjoyed doing the activities with the kids.

“I like the jump rope ones because that’s all I’m good at, but mainly anything they can do I like,” he said. “They’re always having fun, and if they’re having fun, I have fun.”

a.hutchinson@theday.com

Twitter: @ahutch411