If you’re looking for a great way to reinforce kindness with your kids or students, then you’ll love our Random Acts of Kindness Jar. This kindness project is a way to encourage kids and adults to spread kindness to people around them throughout the year. It’s a great Valentine’s Day project, but it’s really for any time you want to reinforce positive behaviors.
When we feel like we are constantly disciplining and refereeing negative behavior, It’s easy to get bogged down in the problems. One way to combat negative behavior is by providing opportunities for positive behavior, like helping others.
Whether you’re making a family kindness jar or a classroom kindness jar, have young children, or work with older teens, you can use the kindness jar to teach empathy and compassion. There’s no age limit on who can participate in a kindness jar! It’s a beautiful way to encourage your kids of all ages to do good deeds and show empathy for others.
Random Acts of Kindness Jar Challenge
Supplies:
- wide-mouth mason jar (or empty pickle jar, pasta sauce jar, etc)
- Printable random acts of kindness cards (or pre-cut slips of paper)
- Printable jar label
- scissors, tape, and something to write with
Instructions
First, decide how long you want your kindness challenge to last. Are you doing one random act of kindness each week of the year? Is it a daily month-long challenge? Are you setting a goal of 100 acts of kindness? This will determine how many acts of kindness you should come up with and how many random acts of kindness cards you need to print and cut.
Next, find a jar that is large enough to fit a hand inside. These wide-mouth mason jars are great. Or use an old pickle jar like we did. You can download and print our kindness jar labels. Choose the pink or green one and then just cut and tape it around your jar. Easy peasy.
Once you’ve decided how many acts of kindness cards you need and have your jar ready, you are ready to introduce the kindness jar to your kids. Together with your kids or students, brainstorm ideas of ways to show kindness. This will look different depending on the kids’ age and whether your kindness jar is for home or in the classroom.
For families, these could be big acts, like paying for a stranger’s groceries or dinner, or small acts like leaving bottled water and a snack outside with a note for the delivery person. if you’re in a school setting, it could be throwing away someone’s trash for them, holding the door for a teacher, or giving a thank-you note to the custodians or other staff members,
Kids LOVE coming up with these! You’ll be surprised by all of the acts of kindness ideas that arise from your brainstorming session. This is also a great time to show the kids the jar and have it prepared with a kindness jar label.
Once you’ve created a list, write these down on the Random Acts of Kindness Cards and put them in your labeled kindness jar. If you don’t have access to a printer, you can cut slips of paper and use those instead.
(Note: If you’ll be repeating this kindness project, you might want to laminate the slips ahead of time, to save you some time in the future.)
Once your jar is complete, then it’s time to practice kindness! I suggest choosing the first random act of kindness card right away. Your kids won’t want to wait!
Free Printables!
We’ve created free printable Random Acts of Kindness Cards and a printable jar label in both pink and green. Click the download buttons below ????????
Wrapping Up: Random Acts of Kindness Jar Challenge
This simple project doesn’t take long, yet it has lasting effects. You are encouraging kindness in the classroom or at home when you provide clear opportunities for practicing compassion. When we model and join kids in the acts of kindness project with the kindness jar, we reinforce everything we’ve taught them about kindness and empathy. Helping kids take the step from knowledge to practice creates lasting effects and creates the desire to do more good in the world. It’s the perfect way to teach kindness through both words and actions.
