Inside: Use this quarantine kindness activity to help kids thank essential workers like our nurses, doctors, mail carriers, and grocery workers.
We are so lucky.
During the Coronavirus Pandemic where we’re all social distancing and quarantining, we aren’t really stuck at home.
We’re safe at home (even if some days it does feel like we’re stuck at home).
But so many people in our community aren’t able to stay safe at home because they’re essential workers.
Essential to our health and safety.
Essential to us getting foods and goods we used to mindlessly grab.
Essential to us being able to stay safe at home.
It’s, of course, our health care workers like nurses and doctors.
It’s our first responders like firefighters and police officers and our paramedics.
But as we’ve all come to realize, it’s also our grocery workers. It’s our mail carriers and delivery drivers and garbage collectors.
And we’re all looking for ways to show our appreciation to them.
To give them our undying appreciation and gratitude that they’re doing their job and doing it knowing they may get sick in the process, so we can stay home.
But with this one kindness activity, we can help our kids show gratitude and kindness towards our essential workers.
The Importance of Gratitude and Kindness
Gratitude and kindness are important at any time of the year…but especially right now while we’re all quarantined.
We spend a lot of time helping our kids focus on being grateful because when we’re focused on what we have, rather than what we don’t have, we’re happier.
Related: Year-Round Activities to Show Gratitude
We also spend a lot of time helping our kids speak and act with kindness more often.
We talk about kindness with these 60 kindness discussion starters.
We participate in kindness activities like our Fidget Spinner Kindness Activity, our 100 Acts of Kindness Challenge, and our Sibling Ice Cream Challenge to encourage more kindness at home.
And we volunteer as a family with these monthly challenges.
Related: The Best Kid-Friendly Ways to Volunteer
During this time, we all wish we could do more to help.
And maybe it’s because we feel helpless right now that we can’t make a difference or spread kindness in our “normal” ways.
But we can make a difference by showing our essential workers how much we appreciate them.
And as an added bonus, this is a simple way to keep our kids busy, with a screen-free activity, which is always welcomed. All you need is a printer and some coloring supplies, which we already had from one of our many pre-quarantine Target runs.
Kindness Activity to Help Kids Thank Essential Workers
There aren’t that many ways to help our kids thank essential workers since we’re avoiding contact with them.
Parents are either having their groceries delivered or are shopping whenever possible without their kids. So encouraging our kids to simply thank our grocery workers won’t work.
Mail and cardboard boxes might be contaminated with the virus, so I don’t let my kids get the mail or packages anymore. The days of thanking our mail carrier in person are long gone.
But we can encourage our kids to color these pages and leave them for our essential workers or mail them to your local hospital or local grocery store.
This is also a perfect activity for our virtual classrooms and virtual Girl Scout meetings.
Related: Best Girl Scout Resources to Encourage Kindness
How to Use These Kindness Activities for our Essential Workers
1. Download the coloring sheets (download them below)
2. Choose the essential worker you’d like to thank first: doctor/nurses, grocery workers, garbage/recycling collectors, mail carriers/delivery people, or teachers.
3. Choose which version of the coloring sheet you’d like your kids to use.
There are 4 versions of each one:
- Coloring sheet
- Coloring sheet where your kids can sign their name
- Coloring sheet where your kids can complete the sentence about why they’re grateful.
- Coloring sheet where they write or dictate the whole message
4. Print the gratitude coloring page your kids want and let them decorate it with crayons, colored pencils or markers.
5. Deliver or “deliver” the thank you coloring page/note:
For grocery workers, you can drop it off at the customer service desk at your grocery store or you can mail it to your local store or you can tape it to your front door on your delivery day.
For your mail carrier or delivery person, you can pop it into your mailbox or tape it to your mailbox or tape it to your front door on the day you know you’re going to get a package.
For your garbage and recycling collectors, you can tape it to your trash cans.
For nurses and doctors, you can mail it to your local hospital’s HR department. Or you can take a picture of your kids’ artwork and post it to social media…perfect for Nurse Appreciation Week (the first week in May) and tag your local hospital so they can share it with their staff.
And even though our teachers aren’t officially being categorized as essential workers since they’re working from home, we all know how essential they are.
Related: Ways to Show Our Teachers Appreciation During Distance Learning
So for your kids’ teachers, you can take a picture of their artwork and email it to them, or if you feel comfortable, you can ask them for their mailing address so you can send them mail.
Because when our essential workers feel appreciated and know their work is valued, it’ll make heading out of their safe home to help the rest of us be able to stay inside our safe homes a little easier.
And when our kids focus on being grateful for the community helpers turned essential workers turned superheroes, they’ll know their kindness and appreciation is making a difference during this time.
Which will make all the difference during this quarantine.
Download the Essential Workers Appreciation Coloring Pages here
Download the Fire Fighter Appreciation Coloring Pages here.
Carm says
I love this idea! Unfortunately the link is not working. I’m wondering if others are having difficulty as well.
Nicole Black says
Thank you so much for letting me know the link wasn’t working! It should be good now: https://app.mailerlite.com/sites/content/1989980
Peggy Smith says
Still not working. The above link just takes me to another email sign up.
Maryann Laursen says
Thank you sooo much for these amazing pages, and the great idea. I can say, the link is working just fine now, as I´ve just downloaded it perfectly here now.
Nicole Black says
I’m so glad to hear it. You are so welcome! We’re all looking for ways we can thank these unsung heroes!
Sara says
Love this! These are great for when we do our community helpers/neighborhood unit as well. Thank you for sharing!
Nicole Black says
You’re so welcome. Enjoy!
Kathy Asper says
Nicole, these are amazing! Thanks for sharing them. I am the Project Director for a county-wide afterschool program in my state, working with nearly 100 middle schoolers in three school districts. Since the schools closed in early March, and will not open again until fall, my staff and I have been attempting to keep in touch with our youth members via several social platforms. We have a theme each week, and I’d love to share these coloring sheets with them for our planned “Kindness week” in mid May. (We joked about calling it “Don’t pound on your siblings during safe at home time!”) I am able to download these wonderful items, but I’m thinking that our youth would have to join your site/newsletter in order to access them. So… I’m wondering if I could provide them with copies via email? I’d provide a link to your site so that their parents/guardians could check out your wonderful resources for them during this time. Since I am very cognizant of intellectual property issues, I wanted to check with you. Feel free to respond here, or you can email me and I’ll be happy to provide more details. Thanks so much. Kathy A. kasper(at)arborplaceinc(dot)org
Nicole Black says
Thank you! I just sent you an email!
Kim says
These are great, thank you for sharing. Do you have printable for cheering up the residents in nursing homes?
Nicole Black says
Ooh, that’s a great idea. I didn’t make it though since the virus stays on paper and our nursing home residents are the most susceptible to the virus right now. ;(
Ramona says
Do the project and email it! they can print a clean copy and have actual art!
Linda Whitmore says
I am having trouble with the link.
Nicole Black says
Were you able to grab it?
Ruth Patterson says
Thank you for making these thank you notes available.
We gave the bus driver who delivers lunch to school children a thank you coloring sheet earlier.
The next day she asked the child’s name (of course she signed it with a ?). Several days later she mentioned the note again. I meant so much to her.
Nicole Black says
I’m so happy to hear that! And I LOVE that bus drivers are delivering school lunches. That’s incredible!
Vanessa Coggan says
I love these Nicole! I’m the executive director for our local chamber of commerce. I would love to post these pictures on our social media account and ask kids to send us a picture of them colored. We would link back to your website as well. If you don’t mind letting me know either way, I would really appreciate it.
Nicole Black says
I’m so glad you love them…yes you can absolutely post these and I appreciate the link back for people to grab it for themselves. Thank you for spreading the kindness! Hope you are staying safe and well, Nicole
Vanessa says
Thank you for these coloring Pages, I work at schools and I have to make curriculum for them every day, for the last week of school I would like to have them do something for the essential workers and these pages are perfect! Do I use the “coffeeandcarpool.com” name to give credit for making these awesome pages or is there another name?
Nicole Black says
Coffee and Carpool is our website…but since we have become more and more focused on intentionally teaching kids to be kind, we’re currently transitioning over to Raising Kind Kids. I appreciate it! So glad you can use the resources
Michelle says
Thank you for providing a wonderful printable for my class. It was exactly what I was looking for to spread kindness during kindness week.
Nicole Black says
I’m so glad you loved it!
Nawadnianie Ziemniaków says
I’m having a tiny issue I cant seem to be able to subscribe your rss feed, I’m using google reader fyi.