Valentine’s Day - A Great Day to Teach Kindness
Last year we published a podcast episode about using Valentine’s Day to teach kindness to kids.
While we don’t know what the future holds for our kids, I know for certain I hope my kids grow up to be happy and kind humans. And it’s never too early to help our kids become those kind humans. Valentine’s Day lends itself nicely to have conversations about what does it mean to be kind and performing acts of kindness for others.
My daughter will be making Valentine’s for her classmates this year. Here are some talking points I plan on bringing up with her while we make the Valentine’s:
“Why are we making Valentine’s today for your friends?”
“What does it mean to be a friend?”
“How are you kind to your friends?”
“How are your friends kind to you?”
“How do you know when you’re friend is feeling happy?” (e.g., facial expressions, body language?)
“How do you feel when you make your friend smile or feel happy?”
“How do you think your friends will feel when they open their Valentine from you?”
“How do you think it will feel to get Valentine’s from your friends?”
Here are a couple of books that are wonderful to read with your kids to help with the concept of being kind.
Have you Filled a Bucket Today?: A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids by Carol McCloud - This book does an excellent job to making an abstract idea (e.g., how kindness impacts those around us and ourselves) into a more concrete concept. A lot of schools also use this books as part of their Social-Emotional curriculum so please don’t hesitate to reach out to your little one’s school; teachers are always happy to partner and can be a great way to carryover some of the same language.
Heartprints by P.K. Hallinan - This is a similar book to the first one; showing our little ones that doing acts of kindness leaves heartprints on those around us.
How will you help your little one learn and practice kindness? Any favorite books or activities?
We hope Valentine’s Day is a wonderful, fun, creative place to start and continue through out the year!
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