We’ve been invited to participate in the “100 Acts of Kindness” project, where participants are challenged to accomplish 100 Acts of Kindness over the next four weeks and participate in each weekly challenge (there will be four simple ones). We decided to challenge ourselves to do as many Random Acts of Kindness that we could think of in a day. I told the kids to think of ways we could be nice to others, and show them kindness and gratitude without expecting anything in return. The kids had great ideas!!
Random Acts of Kindness
We started by making up a basket for our local firefighters. We shared a box of our recently-delivered Girl Scout cookies (yum!) and some fruit “to keep them strong” (according to my son:). Each of the kids said thank you in their own way, “Thank you for always protecting us,” “Thank you for being brave,” “Thank you for teaching us about fires.”
At home, we went through our book and found many that were for toddlers and babies. We then stopped by our pediatrician’s office, and dropped off these board books that we had grown out of. We hoped that the kids who were waiting to see the doctor would enjoy some of our favorite stories.
We drove to our favorite place in the world, our library! We brought our children’s librarians a box of Valentine’s chocolates and told them thank you for all of their hard work and wonderful programs (we love you!).
Next stop, we went through the drive though at Starbucks and paid for the 2 cars behind us (the kids loved to watch the faces of the surprised customers behind us:).
We sang “Happy Birthday” to our cousin on the phone, made and mailed a bunch of Valentine’s cards, let people go ahead of us at the supermarket, and put away each others’ toys. It was fun to see how the kids were trying to come up with new ways to be kind- they even included our dogs, who got to be brushed and petted.
Finally, we went to our park and picked up some litter- actually quite a lot of trash! Our day of “Random Acts of Kindness” brightened our neighborhood, and showed my kids ways to show their generous spirit. Though it was a concentrated effort, this is not only a one time event- we are always trying to show kindness and gratitude. This challenge was a fun way to pack kindness activities into one busy day- and their smiles at the end of the day showed it was worth it!
How do you teach your kids about kindness? Have you ever done good deeds or random acts of kindness as a family?
More Examples of Teaching Kindness:
Teaching Tolerance through Children’s Books
Love this!
I love the acts of kindness your children chose – and they are adorable in these photos!
Thank you so much!:) I asked them their favorite, and they couldn’t really decide, but said paying for someone at Starbucks was cool because it was such a surprise for the people.
I love this idea so much! I think I’ll do the same thing. It is something adults should do more often! A great teachable moment!
I think that this is a good way for kids to learn how to be nice to one and another. So kids should go on this and look at this stuff so they can learn on their own and teach others that might not know about kindness and try it out to people kids and even old people.