Random Act of Kindness for Kids That Costs $1

Inside: Use this hide a dollar random act of kindness for kids that only costs one dollar to spread kindness.

My kids love going to our local dollar store with me because they usually get to come away with a treat.

Sometimes they choose a candy or a toy or now that they’re older, something from the beauty aisle.

But we also spend a lot of time, talking about other people and how lucky we are and grateful we are that we can go into a store and purchase what we need and we can often purchase what we want.

So sometimes my kids get a dollar to spend on themselves, and sometimes they get a dollar to spend on someone else instead.

At first, my kids were disappointed for their lack of candy, but we talked a lot about how excited someone else would be when they get to spend money they found.

So we love this Hide a Dollar Random Act of Kindness that’s perfect for kids to do for other kids…and it only costs $1.

Other Kid-Friendly RAKs for Kids

We are raising kind kids. It’s so essential to our family values, it’s one of our only two family rules.

But when we’re teaching our kids to be kind, we don’t focus on random acts of kindness, or “RAKs.”

Why?

We want to make kindness a habit.

We want it to be their knee jerk reaction and the everyday way they live their lives.

So we focus on simple, normal, everyday acts of kindness like greeting someone, thanking someone, getting your sister juice when you get some for yourself, holding the door for the person behind you, and staying to the right so others can pass.

We encourage this kind of kindness often with our Scavenger Hunt for Kindness.

We also encourage it with our Sibling Kindness Game and our 365 Days of Kindness Calendar.

But the showier, louder, random acts of kindness that sometimes cost money are also fun to do once in a while because they create joy and happiness for others just because. They’re meant to be small reminders to others that there is good and kindness in this world.

And so while we much prefer less showy, more normalized, maybe even more boring ways to show everyday kindness, these random acts of kindness are a whole lot of fun.

In the summer, we use our Summer RAKs to to hide small, new toys like bubbles and cars and playdoh at the playground with these sweet little notes:

At Christmas time, we love to do our Christmas Lights Random Acts of Kindness and award a local family for the best lights in the neighborhood.

We love taking cookies to our local Fire Station, especially around 9/11. We usually take them our Friendship Cookies.

But we also love hiding a dollar or two among our local dollar store toys or candy for other kids to find and spend on themselves.

How to Use the Hide a Dollar Random Act of Kindness for Kids

1. Print out the sheet on cardstock. (You can download it below).

2. Cut the sheet on the dotted line.

3. Tape a dollar bill to each card.

4. Go to a Dollar Store and encourage your kids to hide the dollar in the toy section or under a candy bar in the candy aisle.

My daughter had a hard time deciding just where to hide it (which meant she spent less time asking me for things to buy her!) She finally settled on the candy aisle and went with hiding her dollar in the Rice Krispies box.

5. Remind them instead of spending the dollar on themselves, they’re giving it to someone else to spend as a small way to be generous and as a small random act of kindness.

And remind them that since this is a random act of kindness, and ‘random’ means happening without deciding or choosing who gets it, they most likely won’t see the person who finds the money.

Although, one day we got lucky and got to see our recipient and her excitement as she ran to show her mom and sister her found dollar.

It was a joy to watch her.