Easter Kindness Challenge for Kids for April

Inside: Use this Easter Kindness Challenge to encourage more kindness during March and April and give kids lots of chances to practice being kind.

Easter has always been a favorite holiday, even though in family it’s not a religious holiday. So we celebrate the holiday and have fun with egg hunts, and Easter bunny visits, and lots and lots of Peep candies.

Easter is fun, no matter how you celebrate.

And in our home, we choose to celebrate with egg shaped food, bunnies hiding too much candy, and a ton of kindness.

The candy is pretty easy. But the kindness can be a little harder. So we use this Easter Kindness Challenge to encourage our kids to speak and act with kindness more often all through March and April, no matter when Easter falls.

More Easter Kindness and Social Emotional Learning Activities:

Since kids absolutely love all things holidays, Easter is the perfect excuse to sneak in a little learning about social emotional concepts like kindness, gratitude, and thoughtfulness.

Kindness can of course be taught year round (and should be!) but we have great Easter activities themed for March and April to make learning a little more fun and a ton more hands-on.

We like to play this Easter Kind or Unkind Sorting Game

We connect kindness with writing with this Easter Craft and Write activity.

We countdown to Easter with a kind act a day with this Easter Kindness Countdown Paper Chain

Or we can countdown to spring break with this Spring Break with this Kindness Paper Chain

We sneak a little kindness into our Easter egg hunt with these Easter Kindness Notes for Egg Hunt

We read all the different ways we can be kind during Easter with this I am Kind on Easter Emergent Reader.

We can intentionally practice being kind in different ways with these Easter Kindness Role Playing Cards.

And we use the Easter 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 a specific month, we also have monthly kindness challenges like our Easter Kindness Challenge.

How to use the Easter Kindness Challenge

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

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

3. When they get to the end of the sheet, they can earn some Easter treats, actual bunny Peeps, or some quality time doing a “special” activity like extra recess, a trip to see the Easter Bunny, or a trip to the library to get Easter books.

4. Continue with the positive reinforcement with another kindness challenge so kindness becomes a habit, like our May Flower Kindness Challenge for May.

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.