Kindness is one of the most important attributes we can help our kids learn. The best part is that it doesn’t take much teaching. Kids are hard-wired for kindness. They might just need a gentle reminder of what is already inside them. How to Teach Kindness We’ve included some of our fantastic teacher-made resources in this blog post that you can use to bring our Random Acts of Kindness Day ideas to life in your classroom. Bring the kindness revolution to your school by discussing what being kind means and why it’s important with your children. Read on to discover our top five random acts of kindness ideas for school. But don’t worry, you don’t have to use these only on Random Acts of Kindness Day, these are great for doing kind things during Thanksgiving (it makes one of the best gratitude activities), during the Christmas season, or really all year long!

By definition, a random act of kindness is a selfless action performed by an individual to help or benefit someone else, without any expectation of recognition or reward. These acts can be small or large and can have a significant impact on the person or people receiving them, as well as the person performing the act. Go to the fire or police department to say thank you with a yummy treat. This chocolate chip cookie pie is always a hit! There are endless ways to be kind and kindness can look different for everyone, but I wanted to make a list of kind acts to get you started. I tried to put together some ideas that maybe you haven’t thought of before as well as ones you likely have.

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In Weeks 2-7, you will learn about the six kindness concepts: Respect, Caring, Inclusiveness, Integrity, Responsibility, and Courage. Not only will you learn about the concepts themselves, you will study them in your community and collect data on what you find. All Kindness in the Classroom ® lesson plans have been mapped to the five CASEL Core Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Competencies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Education Standards (NHES), the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards, when applicable, and the national Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy, Mathematics, History/Social Studies, and Science & Technical Subjects. Utilization and adoption of these national standards and competencies vary by state, however, teachers can align their own state standards with each lesson as well. For each unit, a Standards Map was created to summarize each of the standards met by all lessons within that unit. Most credit the phrase’s popularity to a California woman named Anne Herbert who wrote an article titled “Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty” in a 1985 issue of the countercultural journal “Whole Earth Review.” Herbert went on to co-write a children’s book of the same name in 1993, securing the term’s place in the zeitgeist. Tom remembers other fun times he's had, like metal detecting with Uncle Kevin and the cousins or inventing a new secret language with Derek. Being kind and being nice are two different things. If we want our kids to learn empathy and kindness, we must help them understand what it is all about. The best way to teach kindness is to model it.

I tried to keep them as general as possible so you can adjust them as you want. For example, if it says to write a nice note to your best friend you can easily write it to a neighbor or teacher. The opportunity to act exists throughout the lessons, but it really comes into play in the projects. Once students have the ideas and the tools, they put it all into action. The unit projects will have students bringing real, tangible kindness into the world. In Weeks 8-16, you will work on a community-based project regarding at least one of these concepts that you identify as low or missing in your community. Through community mapping, analysis, and partnership, you will work together in small groups, planning and executing a community project in service to the deficient or missing concept. Your chief goal is to increase kindness in your community! Our new 16-week High School elective course will give you the opportunity to gather new and deeper insights about respect, caring, integrity, inclusiveness, and courage and to begin to apply them in new and more meaningful ways. Through the development and deployment of a community service project, you will build self-initiative, critical thinking, and community networking skills. Each week gives you new ways to increase your capacity for kindness. You sing it to the tune of “If you’re happy and you know it”, and you can insert different emotions. The kids will then have to make the corresponding facial expression.

Teaching social emotional competencies, at a universal level, is one of the primary goals within our Comprehensive Student Support Model in Colorado Springs District 11. We were looking for a curriculum that would help increase prosocial behaviors and we have definitely seen the benefit to our community while using Kindness in the Classroom. We chose Kindness in the Classroom for many reasons including the fact that it had strong research behind it showing improved culture and student outcomes. Growing a seed is an easy way for kids to get hands-on experience with kindness. Nurturing a seed takes care, thoughtfulness, patience, and love. These are all qualities that we want our kids to practice. One of my goals for my kids is to teach them to be more kind and to do things for others whether it’s strangers, people they know or love, or even people they maybe don’t love quite as much. A worm is a great way for your kids to see kindness in action as the worm gets longer. The fun part is there is no limit on the number of segments you can add. The worm will just get longer and longer. 12. Kindness Bingo