Inside: Encourage and Celebrate Kindness in your kids with these kindness elves and caught being kind cards.
My kids love fairies, elves and all magical creatures, large and small.
The tooth fairy comes to our house.
The Back to School Fairies bring school supplies every fall.
And we believe in the man wearing the big red suit and his toy makers.
So it was no stretch when new magical creatures visited our home.
Since we are intentionally raising our kids to be kind, we invited the Kindness Elves into our home.
Related: How to Raise Kind Kids
We place such a high value on being kind, is one of our only two family rules. We take the time to model it, praise it, and “reward” it.
Who are the Kindness Elves and why did we purchase them for our family? They are 3-inch little elves who don’t mind being seen and spend their days encouraging kids to be kinder versions of themselves.
They leave notes, leave suggestions, and leave kindness quests our family can do together.
The elves encourage us and our kids to be kinder by suggesting actions that remind us to be kind to those around us every day.
And they help celebrate kindness and kind acts when our kids exhibit it.
Why is encouraging and celebrating kindness so important:
Some kids are naturally kind. Whether it’s their genes or their personality, being kind comes easy and feels natural to them.
But most kids-including my kids-need to be explicitly taught, reminded, and some days cajoled to be kind.
They need to be shown what kindness looks like, feels like and sounds like through continuous modeling and reminders so that being kind and showing kindness becomes their knee-jerk reaction.
Because the more kids who naturally and easily choose to be kind on a daily basis, the more kind our world become. The more kindness will spread.
Related: 15 Surprising Things to Ban To Raise Kinder Kids
How can you use the Kindness Elves to encourage kindness:
The Kindness Elves leave kindness ideas which help our kids be more kind and show kindness.
Because while being kind can be quite easy to do, sometimes thinking up ways to show kindness can be tricky.
So the Kindness Elves take the tricky part away and they provide kindness suggestions, kindness challenges, or kindness quests that your kids can accomplish.
And these ideas arrive on little notes (you may or may not write) and are left in the elves’ mailbox.
The kindness activities kids find in their mailbox range from simple, normal every-day-acts of kindness to larger gestures that will take more time or planning or funds.
And the notes can come with the supplies needed to accomplish the kind act.
This Kindness Elf brought muffin mix with her kindness note to bake muffins for neighbors.
Kindness Ideas for the Kindness Elves’ Notes:
- Make muffins for neighbors
- Collect clothes that don’t fit and donate them
- Take your teacher flowers
- Be an includer and invite someone to play with you today
- Take your in neighbor’s trash cans
- Draw a friend a card
- Give a compliment to someone
- Help your sibling do a chore
- Take your pet or a neighbor’s pet on a walk around the neighborhood
- Read or “read” a book to a younger sibling
- Help a sibling learn a new skill
- Encourage a friend when they’re doing something hard for them.
- Write or draw a thank you note for your teacher
- Donate canned food to a food pantry
- Hold the door open for the person behind you leaving a store or restaurant
- Smile at 5 people
- Offer to let someone else go first
- Share your school supplies with a classmate
- Turn in something you found that was lost
- Console someone who is hurt or sad
- Sit with a friend at the nut-free table if you have a safe lunch
- Make and hide Kindness Rocks for someone else to find
How can you use the Kindness Elves to celebrate kindness:
As your kids perform more and more acts of kindness that are both suggested by the Kindness Elves and the ones your kids come up with on their own, these acts of kindness should be celebrated, praised and “rewarded.”
With a little positive reinforcement, kids will become intrinsically motivated to continue to be kinder people.
So we need to “catch” kids being kind more often, make a big deal of it, and “reward” them and their kind behaviors.
We can reward their kindness with praise and with these “Caught Being Kind” Cards.
And instead of receiving the “reward” cards from you, the Kindness Elves can deliver them.
Want the Caught Being Kind Cards so your Kindness Elves can start leaving them for your kids?
Get the Caught Being Kind Cards by clicking the link below.
And you can get your own Kindness Elves here.
Because they’ll help you spread the kindness in your home. Which is pretty darn magical if you ask me.
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