December Kindness Challenge to Encourage More Kindness

Inside: Use this Holiday Gifts December Kindness Challenge to encourage more kindness and give kids lots of chances to practice being kind this December.

With the December holidays fast approaching, we can get quickly bogged down in our busy to do lists.

The kids feed off our stress of getting everything done to make the December holidays perfect for them.

When they feed off our stress, the December holidays can quickly feel unmagical when kids act rude, ungrateful, or thoughtless.

There is a way we can combat that: by intentionally focusing on and encouraging more acts of kindness.

Because when we slow down and focus on what really matters around the December holidays-family, friends, generosity, giving, kindness- that’s when the magic of the holidays comes back.

One easy way to help kids focus on kindness to their family and classmates is to gamify kindness and make kindness a challenge with our December Kindness Gifts Challenge.

It’ll lead to us all having a kind December.

More December and Winter Kindness and Social Emotional Learning Activities:

Kindness can of course be taught without cutesy themes, but using seasons, holidays and things kids already enjoy- like winter and December holidays- can increase the buy-in and pique their interest. It’ll make learning a little more fun and a ton more hands-on.

We countdown to Winter Holiday Break with a kindness act every day.

We learn all the different ways we celebrate the December holidays with this interactive emergent reader: We All Celebrate Differently.

We like to play this Hot Cocoa Kind or Unkind Sort during the winter months.

We spread kindness to others with these Winter Kindness Notes.

We read about all the ways we can be kind during the winter months with this Winter Kindness Emergent Reader.

We can spread kindness during winter with this Winter Kindness Bucket List.

And we use this December Kindness Challenge.

Why Should We Use Kindness Challenges?

We shouldn’t need to praise kids to be kind, they should just want to be kind and then do it.

Well, yes, in an ideal world.

But when we’re intentionally teaching kids to be kind, we have to bring out the big guns and use all the tools at our disposal, including positive reinforcement.

When kindness becomes their norm, their habit, and their gut reaction, then yes, we can wean them off the “rewards” and positive reinforcement.

Kindness is a verb. It’s something you have to do, rather than something you just talk about.

So if we are serious about focusing on social-emotional learning and kindness, we have to teach kids how to be kind with role playing strategies and with social emotional learning curriculum and then give them ample opportunities to be kind.

We have to give them situations where they can practice being kind to classmates, siblings, teammates, friends, adults, and people in the service industry (food servers, mail carriers, trash collectors, custodians, retail staff, flight attendants, etc.)

So to make kindness consistent and more of an everyday activity, we can gameify kindness and make it a challenge (because we know most kids can’t resist trying to “win.”)

We have Monthly Kindness Challenges like this one.

We have a Simple Normal Everyday Scavenger Hunt that kids love.

We have seasonal Kindness Challenges so kids do one kind act a week: Summer Kind Kids Challenge, Fall Kind Kids Challenge, Winter Kind Kids Challenge, Spring Kind Kids Challenge.

We have 100 Acts of Kindness Challenge so kids do one kind act a day and by the time they get to the 100th day of school, they’re 100 days smarter AND 100 days kinder.

But to connect kindness to fun things kids already love, we also have monthly kindness challenges like our December Kindness Challenge.

How to use the December Kindness Challenge

1. Download and print the version you wish to use: black and white to color in the gifts or the color version to cross off the gifts. (download it below.)

2. Every time one child is kind to another child, they get to color in a gift. If you’re using it for students, every time they are kind to another student they can color in a gift.

3. When they get to the end of the sheet, they can earn a hot cocoa, a small gift, or new cozy mittens for winter.

4. Continue with the positive reinforcement with another kindness challenge so kindness becomes a habit, like our New Year’s Eve Kindness Challenge.

OR… get our Year of Kindness Challenges here all in one place.

Kindness Ideas to Help Kids Easily Act and Speak with Kindness

Sometimes it can be hard for kids to come up with ideas on how to show kindness to others. But it doesn’t have to be hard when you know there are two different kinds of kindness:

big, loud, showy acts of kindness, often random acts of kindness
simple, normal, everyday acts of kindness that can become habit if we practice them enough

Random Acts of Kindness are fun and great, especially for Random Acts of Kindness Day in February. But the much more impactful acts of kindness take no planning, no props, and no money.