Upcoming Kindness Days and Kindness Activities!

A message from your friends at the Connecticut Public Affairs Network...

We’re always on the lookout for more cool kindness ideas! Here are a few of the awesome projects that kids and communities are participating in right now, as well as a few kindness-related dates coming up soon. Take a look at some of the great ways to get involved!

In January 2017, a group associated with Kids for Peace is coordinating The Great Kindness Challenge-School Edition, where schools can sign up online and pledge to be kind for one whole week. Schools can download a challenge list to follow, or come up with their own kindness activities.

Finding ways to be kind is made even easier if you follow the suggestions at any of these websites, some of them for individuals, and some designed to be done in a group like a classroom setting.

RandomActsOfKindness.org teaches you how to be a RAKtavist (Random Act of Kindness doer) with activities like hiding fun-filled Easter eggs in a park for someone to find, or leaving a thank you post-it on a cafeteria tray for the person who has to wash them. There are also lesson plans here for teachers to use (free!), and even research showing how kindness actually makes our brains and bodies better. (Fun Fact: a Swedish study in 2013 found that human heart beats synchronize with each other when we sing together! Kindness activity? Start singing with your friends!)

KindSpring divides its kindness activities into categories like animals, the elderly, and teens, and lets you click a tab to say “I’ve done this.” They also have printable “smile cards” – allowing you to do an anonymous kind act and encourage the next person to pass on the kindness!

 

Download your smile cards here!  They're available in 16 languages. 

Former educator and human services professional Barb Shelly created a website called KidActivities, which features pages of kindness activities and craft ideas specifically for school-age kids and classrooms, including making a kindness paper chain, a wall of love craft, and how to hold a crayon drive for sick kids!

Kindness is important every day, but there are some special dates when people all over the world do something nice for some other person:

• World Kindness Day is coming up on November 13
• Random Act of Kindness Day is February 17
• International Kindness day is July 27

And international Pay It Forward Day is April 28, 2017. This one is special. The goal is to inspire 10 million acts of kindness around the world, and they are being tracked on the website. A bunch of schools, communities, and states from the US have signed up – maybe your school could be next!

Every single kind thing we do for another person helps to make the world a better place. So go find your next kind act through one of these websites, start your own kindness campaign in your school or community, or just smile at the next stranger you see. No act of kindness is too small!