Water Kindness Challenge to Encourage Kindness in Summer

Inside: Use this Water Balloon Kindness Challenge to encourage more kindness during summer and give kids lots of chances to practice being kind.

Summer days are long and hot and full of boredom…unless we give our kids a few fun ideas to keep them off screens and busy.

Water balloons, water play, and trips to the pool are always my go-to ways to encourage my kids to stay cool, stay busy, and stay unplugged.

But summer is also a great time to encourage kids to be more kind…especially to their siblings who they are with 24/7.

So to bring even more kindness and water play into summer, we use this Water Balloon Kindness Challenge to encourage our kids to speak and act with kindness more often all through June, July, and August.

More Summer Kindness and Social Emotional Learning Activities:

Since water and water play is so fun, it’s the perfect way to sneak in a little learning about social emotional concepts like kindness, gratitude, and thoughtfulness.

Kindness can of course be taught year round (and should be!) but we have great kindness activities themed for summer to make learning a little more fun and a ton more hands-on.

We like to play this Water Splash Kind or Unkind Sort.

We connect kindness with writing with this Water Craft and Write.

We countdown to summer break with a kind act a day with this Countdown to Summer Break Kindness Paper Chain.

We spread kindness to friends over the summer with these Compliment Suns.

We read all the different ways we can be kind during summer with this I am Kind in Summer Emergent Reader.

We can intentionally practice being kind in different ways with these Summer Kindness Notecards.

And we use the Water Balloon Kindness Challenge.

Why Should We Use Kindness Challenges like the Water Balloon Kindness Challenge?

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 a specific month, we also have monthly kindness challenges like our Water Kindness Challenge.

How to use the Water Balloon Kindness Challenge

1. Download and print the version you wish to use: black and white to color in the water splashes or color version and cross off the water splashes. (download it below.)

2. Every time one child is kind to another child, they get to color in a water splash or cross off a water splash. If you’re using it for students, every time they are kind to another student they can color in or cross off a splash.

3. When they get to the end of the sheet, they can earn a water balloon fight, a trip to the pool or lake, a super soaker toy or a special activity to celebrate their kindness.

4. Continue with the positive reinforcement with another kindness challenge so kindness becomes a habit, like our other summer kindness challenges.

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.