Teaching kindness in the classroom is a big deal in kindergarten and first grade. However, I found that a lot of resources were not age appropriate when it came to actually teaching it. Keep reading for a sneak peak into my kindness lessons for kindergarten and first grade!
Where to start teaching kindness lessons?
Kindness can be a difficult concept to teach. Students need to understand what it means, what it doesn’t mean, how to do it and how to receive it. These should be ongoing conversations in any primary classroom! When in doubt, I start any lesson with a good picture book. You can find a great picture book on just about anything you need to teach in your classroom especially SEL skills. Here are a few of my favorite books to help introduce and launch conversations around kindness:
- The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig – This one is a favorite when talking about kind actions towards others especially other classmates/students
- Seeds and Trees by Brandon Walden – This one is a GREAT one about the power of kind words
- Try a Little Kindness by Henry Cole – This one is about kind actions in every aspect of our lives
- What Does it Mean to be Kind? by Rana DiOrio
- A Friend is Someone Who by Marilee Joy Mayfield – This one pertains to kindness in friendships
Now what?
Now that you have started talking about what kindness is, it’s time for kindness lessons! My favorite kindness lessons for kindergarten and first grades are lessons that start with a discussion and then lead into an activity. This can look many ways, you can read a book, ask probing questions, discuss the story and/or what it means for our lives, then do an activity. Or you can do more of a kindness curriculum approach, like this one.
In this Kindness Activities for Elementary Students Pack, there is a daily discussion and journaling prompt for your class to engage in.
How Kindness Lessons look in my First Grade Classroom
I use this kindness lesson kit the entire month of February. I find that February/Valentine’s Day is a great time to dive deep into kindness. We also discuss kindness with our back to school lessons so February is a good refresh. However, you can do it whenever you want or your students need it! Some days, I have a kindness story that I share with students. Throughout the story, I ask critical thinking questions that get my students thinking about how kindness looks in their life. We cover many topics from kindness at school, kindness in our classroom, on the playground, at home, with siblings, with friends, etc. After the story, I choose a student who demonstrated kindness the previous day to pull a discussion prompt and/or read it aloud if they would like. We then discuss the prompt, sometimes we make an anchor chart, and then students use the kindness journal to journal about their thinking or personal experiences. Some days, after we journal I have additional activities that we do. We especially love craftivities. I usually do these lessons with our morning meetings or somedays with random time chunks we have before/after library.
I hope this is helpful for teaching kindness in your kindergarten or first grade classroom!
