Inside: Use this Winter Kindness Bucket List Activity to help kids spread kindness throughout the winter months with easy, kid-friendly activities.
Some people love the beginning of winter with Christmas and the lights and the novelty of snow, but by the end of winter, many people are “over it.”
I grew up in Los Angeles, so winter is still novel to my family and we get excited about snow. We love to be in it, play in it, and shovel it…pretty much everything except drive in it.
But for most people, winter is their least favorite season.
It can be hard to love the last part of winter. So to make winter more enjoyable, we can focus on the better parts of winter: the holidays after December!
We celebrate New Year’s with our Kindness Resolutions and MLK Jr. Day with our Birthday Wish for Martin and Valentine’s Day with our Valentine’s Day Kindness Notes.
And we can also encourage kids to spread kindness to those around them this winter with our Winter Kindness Bucket List.
Why We Need to Focus on Kindness in the Winter
Some kids know how to be kind. It seems to be innate, and part of their very soul.
But most kids, my kids included, need to be taught how to be kind. Luckily, kindness is a skill we can teach.
In our family, being kind is so essential, kindness is one of our only two family rules.
And speaking and acting with kindness is perfect for winter since we’re “stuck” indoors more and sharing tight spaces more than any other time of the year.
We celebrate winter and sneak in a little kindness at the same time with our Winter Kindness Challenge, our You’re SNOW Kind Notecards and the December Volunteering Activity, January Volunteering Activity, and the February Volunteering Activity.
We intentionally teach kindness and Social-Emotional Learning with this Mittens Kind or Unkind Sort, Snowman Kind or Unkind Sort, and Hot Cocoa Kind or Unkind Sort.
We can read books about books about being kind during winter.
We can send them messages in the snow with this fun snow kindness activity.
And we use this Winter Kindness Bucket list to work together to help others.
How to Use the Winter Kindness Bucket List:
1. Print and download the Winter Kindness Bucket List printable (download it below).
2. You can print it in color or in black and white to save on ink.
3. If you’re a parent, you can print one for each of your children or if they’re younger, complete it as a family.
If you’re an educator, print one off for each of your students and challenge them to do each activity before the end of winter.
4. Throughout the winter, challenge them to do one thing off the Winter Bucket list checklist each day.
And while the original concept of a Bucket List is things you want to do before you “kick the bucket,” you can explain to kids that it’s a list of things we want to do to help fill other people’s buckets.
These books will help explain the concept:
How Full is Your Bucket?– Bucket Filling is a simple metaphor for “filling” people up and improving the lives of the people around us through kind words and actions.
5. They can check off each bucket of snowballs as they complete the kindness activity or color in the bucket when they finish it.
6. To “reward” their kindness when they complete the kindness list, you can go sledding or skiing, or tubing.
And while we don’t want kids to get into the habit of needing a reward for showing kindness, most kids need a little motivation and positive reinforcement to keep going.
Because these kindness activities, while they seem simple enough, will get our kids into the habit of being kind more often… which will set them up for a much kinder school year.
Download the Winter Kindness Bucket List here.
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