Teaching Kindness – Project Ideas for Early Childhood Education

Implementing early childhood development activities is so important for our kiddos.

This month, some of our lovely Early Childhood Educators created a project based on sharing, turn taking, and how to be kind to your friends. Keep reading to hear all about it!

We started this kindness project by talking to the kids about emotions and what they can do to make their friends happy – using a thumbs up for being kind and a thumbs down for an unkind action. They have started to use this new language throughout their day’s interactions – it has been great to see!

We have seen incredible growth from this Kindness Project such as:

• The kids helping each other get shoes on and off when we are going outside
• Coming to an adult to tell us when they shared a toy with a classmate
• The kiddos are asking their friends for a turn instead of the adults always intervening in situations
• They are learning to negotiate for a turn with the toy in a friendly way

Some activities that have helped reinforce these kindness behaviors:

1. The Sharing Tree.

This is a tree the kids painted and put in the hall. We add hearts to it when they do kind things both at home and at daycare. The entire centre is taking part in this – it’s great! It encourages the kids to keep kindness in the forefront of their mind because they enjoy the reward of putting on a new leaf and watching the tree grow!

2. Partner Painting.

Partner painting is where the kids are put into pairs to paint a picture, but they only have one art tool. This encourages them to use their sharing and negotiation skills to take turns creating their art. This helps build on the skills they are already learning while promoting team work as well.

3. Fill the Bucket.

An activity we haven’t started yet, but plan to, is Fill the Bucket. This will visually demonstrate to the kids how doing nice things will make themselves and others feel better.

That’s why there is no place like Hope.