How to Use Kindness Bookmarks to Encourage Kindness

Inside: Use these kindness bookmarks to encourage kids to remember to be kind even when they’re reading books with unkind characters.

In our house, there are books stacked in every room in our house…bedrooms, the kitchen and the bathroom.

We have books stashed in the car and books piled haphazardly in our several bookcases.

And to go with our collection of books, we also have a healthy collection of bookmarks.

Especially since my kids are all able to read chapter books and my reluctant reader found books that he loves.

There are bookmarks with frogs and dogs and rainbows.

Spiderman, and Harry Potter and Star Wars have their own bookmarks.

But since we’re intentionally raising our kids to be kind, we talk about kindness a lot.

And we read kindness books a lot.

And when we’re reading chapter books with unkind characters or characters who are mean to their siblings, we pause and point it out. We talk about it.

Because kindness is one of our family values.

It’s so essential, we made it one of our only two family rules.

So no matter what book we’re reading, and we read often, we love using these Kindness Conversation Starter Bookmarks and these Kindness Kid Quote bookmarks.

How bookmarks can help spread kindness:

We want kindness to become a habit.

We want our kids to exude kindness without even thinking about being kind.

We want them to behave in a way that lines up with our family values and allows them to speak and act with kindness as often as possible.

And to make that happen, we can’t talk about kindness once.

We can’t assume if we tell our kids to be kind they’ll do it.

We have to consistently share the kindness message with them on constant repeat.

We talk about kindness with these kindness discussion starters.

We participate in kindness challenges and we focus on kindness towards their siblings.

And we wear tshirts that show we wear our kindness on our sleeves.

We also spread kindness by passing them out with these kindness pencil toppers.

So one other simple way to get the kindness message to them is with these bookmarks.

You can get the Kindness Bookmarks here.

They’ll see a kindness message every time they open their book.

When they’re reading a passage with mean, hateful, or spiteful comments as they’re tracking with their kindness bookmark, they’ll pause and evaluate it:

The character is talking this way, should I?
Is that how I would talk to my friend in this situation?
Is this okay to say to my mom?

Our Favorite Kindness Books:

The Kindness Book

One Drop of Kindness

Be Kind

Kindness Starts with You

One

How to use these kindness bookmarks:

1. Purchase and download these bookmarks and print them on cardstock paper.

The THINK bookmarks can easily be printed on the backside of the kindness conversation starter bookmarks.

2. Cut out each bookmark.

3. You can hole punch each bookmark and add a ribbon for extra flair by doubling the ribbon up, looping it through the hole and tucking it into the loop.

You can also laminate the bookmarks if you want them to last longer and be used for classroom discussions.