Kindness is Contagious
World Kindness Day is November 13th so every November our social groups engage in the KINDNESS CHALLENGE!
Kindness is an important skill for every child to learn. Recently, the mindfulness push and anti-bullying campaigns have fueled more discussions of being kind to others. Since “kindness” is such a big word for our kiddos with language delays, we modify the teaching a bit to help them understand the abstract concept.
- First, define the word: You can simply say that “kindness is doing nice things for others.” Be sure to remind older kids that “social skills are really how we think about and treat others around us” to reinforce the definition.
- Next, brainstorm examples of being kind to others. It is helpful to write examples on the board or have pictures of examples for visual cues.
- Then, challenge each child to do as many acts of kindness as they can for the week or month. Each child has his/her name on a chart and they have to recall their kind deed(s) for the day. Some children will need help with recall so be prepared to scaffold the responses.
- Finally, tally up all the kind acts and determine who had the most acts of kindness. The winner gets to pick a game to play with the group.
Watch how excited the kids get about doing the kind deeds. After a few days, you will see it become contagious!
For more information and teaching ideas, check out the following links:
- https://www.randomactsofkindness.org/kindness-ideas
- Lots of teaching ideas and materials for teachers and can easily be adapted for small groups.
https://www.randomactsofkindness.org/for-educators - Game ideas for kindness: https://materials.randomactsofkindness.org/cde/en/RAK_grab_and_go_games.pdf