New Year's Kindness Challenge to Encourage More Kindness

Inside: Use this New Year’s Kindness Challenge to encourage more kindness and give kids lots of chances to practice being kind this January.

Every year, we get the opportunity to start over, to have a fresh start. And it comes on January 1st.

Many of us start the year off on a stong foot with resolutions to eat healthier or read more or start and more importantly keep a new habit.

And while we don’t need to wait for January 1st to start a new habit, it is the perfect time to do it.

So for our kids who are watching our every move, it’s a great time to talk to them about creating a new habit of speaking and acting with kindness more often.

When we want to create a new habit, it’s important to do it often, record our results, and give ourselves some positive reinforcement to keep going.

That’s why our New Year’s Kindness Challenge is perfect for kids who need a little extra help and a lot more reminders to be kind to others. It allows them to be kind often, record their results, and work towards a prize at the end of their month long challenge…all things that will move kids towards making kindness a habit that will last much longer than a month.

It’ll all lead to us having a kind January, a kind year, and much kinder kids.

More New Year’s 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 New Year’s Eve and winter- can increase the buy-in and pique their interest. It’ll make learning a little more fun and a ton more hands-on.

We create these Kindness Resolutions to set the year up with more kindness.

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.

We use this Birthday Wish for Martin to honor and celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

And we use this New Year’s 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 New Year’s Eve Kindness Challenge.

How to use the New Year’s Kindness Challenge

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

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

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

4. Continue with the positive reinforcement with another kindness challenge so kindness becomes a habit, like our Valentine’s Day 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.