Why teach kindness? For many of us it seems like kindness is a natural part of being a child - and hopefully continues to be important into adulthood. But the reality is that, while young children do show innate kindness, they develop habits of being more interested in receiving than giving as they get older.
As early years educators, it's important to remind children about the importance of kindness and to nurture the habit of taking kind actions regularly for others. This is crucial for the child's own development apart from being a way to make the world a more pleasant place! Studies have shown that children that make a concerted effort to do kind things and think of others rather than themselves are themselves much happier and develop better, richer emotional lives and self-esteem.
We've introduced 5 new activities to our Valentine's Day Curriculum Plan around kindness. Over the next couple weeks, the upcoming Valentine's Day gives a great opportunity for learning and play around the themes of love, friendship and kindness.
The Acts of Kindness activity is our Friday Freebie this week - feel free to download and use it in your service with our compliments (scroll down to the bottom of this page to see the download link).
This curriculum plan now provides plenty of activities for you to choose from or adapt for your service:
- Being Kind to people in your Community (NEW)
- Acts of Kindness (NEW)
- Kind Words (NEW)
- Acts of Kindness Board (NEW)
- Kindness Stones Craft (NEW)
- Books about Love and Friendship
- Drawing Heart Rhyme
- Facts about Valentine's Day
- Who Was St. Valentine?
- Friend Name Cards
- Love Potion Activity
- Valentine's Day Card Shop
- Valentines' Day in Different Languages
- Heart Pairs Matching Game
- Secret Something
- Cake for Me
- Pink Painting
- Cupid's Arrow
- Love Stories
- Lost Arrow Hunt
- Fishing for Love
- Happy Hearts
- Visit a Place of Worship
- Anatomy for Kids
Purchase the Valentine's Day Curriculum Plan for download from the Early Years Shop or sign up for membership in the Early Years Resource Factory and get access to all our existing and new curriculum plansas well as customisable newsletter for your service and hundreds of other printable materials for a modest monthly subscription fee.
