Give each student at least one compliment before the end of the day. While you are encouraging students to be kinder to others, make sure to practice some kindness yourself. To keep them excited about the challenge, give them star stickers to add to a classroom chart or a paper cutout to stick on a bulletin board when they meet their goal. Give the students a goal to meet, such as performing three kind acts per week or noticing five kind acts per week. In this challenge, students will recognize when someone does something nice for them unexpectedly and surprise others with random acts of kindness themselves. Acts of kindness challengeĬhallenging your students to a competition can be an effective motivator for increasing kindness. Give your students some time to write down their appreciation for someone who recently did something nice for them, and encourage them to deliver their notes as soon as they can. They should sneak the sticky note onto that student’s desk when he or she is not looking to make it truly random and fun.Īnother method is to use thank-you notes. Provide the class with a supply of sticky notes and explain that anyone can take a sticky note at any time and write down a compliment for another student. One method is to use complimentary notes or positive sticky notes. Sharing this idea with students can encourage them to show kindness to their friends and families in unexpected ways. Once students understand what acts of kindness are, introduce them to the idea of random acts of kindness. Once the students are done, collect the notecards and read them aloud in order to help the students understand acts of kindness. You can also have students brainstorm independently by passing out a notecard to each child and instructing the students to write down something nice that someone else did for them lately and how it made them feel. small), but be sure to emphasize the importance of small acts of kindness in addition to grand gestures. You can brainstorm as a large group with open-ended questions like, “What was something kind you saw someone do lately-big or small?” Write down the students’ responses on a whiteboard or chalkboard and break them into two categories (big vs. With this concept in mind, brainstorming ideas on how to be kind as a class should instill a sense of ownership in kids that helps them feel excited about practicing kindness. There are many strategies for teaching kindness-far too many to include them all here-but below are six solid strategies to start with (Proud to be Primary, 2017).īrainstorm ideas as a class (or a family)Ĭhildren (and adults) are more likely to be engaged and involved in something they helped create or develop (Dirks, Cummings, & Pierce, 1996). Kindness can be taught at home or in the classroom, and preferably, it’s taught in both contexts. However, it is something that should be practiced regularly to ensure that it will stick with kids throughout childhood and into adulthood. The good news is that kindness is a natural human response that likely won’t need much prodding or encouragement. This likely sounds like a very daunting task. How do you teach something as important as kindness to children? Other Fun Empathy Exercises for the Classroom.3 Empathy Worksheets for Students & Adults (PDFs).How to Teach Empathy to Children & Adults.7 Kindness Activities for Elementary Students, Preschoolers, and Middle Schoolers.These science-based exercises will not only enhance your ability to understand and work with your emotions but will also give you the tools to foster the emotional intelligence of your clients, students or employees. Before you read on, we thought you might like to download our three Emotional Intelligence Exercises for free. Kindness and empathy are important in fostering emotional intelligence. To this end, this article will walk you through a range of fun activities, exercises, and worksheets to help both children and adults develop the capacity for kindness and empathy in everyday life. Likewise, imagine how different classrooms, offices, organizations, and homes around the world might be if more adults stopped to consider how they might demonstrate more empathy and kindness in their regular interactions. While many of a child’s everyday activities, such as playing, going to school, and interacting with caregivers, will provide natural opportunities to develop these critical traits, there is plenty we can do to proactively develop a child’s kindness and empathy. If you were to ask a child psychologist which character traits are most important for a child’s development, kindness and empathy would likely rank high on the list.
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