When Children’s Parliament explores health and wellbeing in schools, children emphasise the importance of friendships. They also talk with us about the importance of caring adults. A common characteristic of friends and a caring adult is kindness. This activity will support children to talk about kindness, and to acknowledge someone who is kind to them.
30 minutes
In small groups of 4-5 children, invite the children to identify examples of being kind. These can be kind thoughts, kind words or kind actions. Encourage the children to reflect on occasions when they might have done something kind for someone, or experienced kindness from someone else. Allow at least 10 minutes for this discussion.
Explain to the children that they are going to create kindness cards to give to someone who has done something kind for them.
Hand out an A5 white card to each child and create a station of collage materials and colouring pens for the children to choose from. On the front of the card, ask the children to write positive message about kindness. They can then choose to draw or use collage materials to illustrate their message.
Next, invite the children to spend time writing their message inside the card to the person who was kind to them. Encourage the children to describe what the kindness meant to them and how it felt.
Once completed, hand out envelopes for the children to place their card inside. If the children would like to, the envelopes can also be decorated and addressed for the person who is to receive the card.
To bring the activity to a close, invite the children to form a circle and share their positive message if they would like to.
Click the button for a printable activity plan.