The Fall Edge: 2025
Raising Kind Kids: Everyday Activities that Build Compassion
The lead-up to the holiday season is the perfect time to celebrate kindness. Here are seven fun, meaningful, and easy activities families can do together.
1. Create a Kindness Catcher
Keep a jar with slips of paper by it in a central spot at home. Whenever a family member does something kind, write it down and drop it in. When the jar is full, read through all the slips and celebrate with a special game or favorite meal.
2. Plant Seeds and Help Them Grow
As you water your seeds, talk about how kindness, like plants, grows when you nurture it. You can have your children give or dedicate their plant to someone they want to thank or honor.
3. Try a Family Kindness Challenge
You can set simple goals to hit each week and make them fun and easy to achieve, such as holding open a door, saying something nice to someone, or helping without being asked.
4. Write Thank You Cards
Make thank you cards for people who make your lives better, such as mail carriers, bus drivers, garbage collectors, crossing guards, and delivery drivers.
5. Select a “Kind Word” of the Day
Choose one word (like helpful, thoughtful, friendly) and talk about what it means at the beginning of the day, and how it might show up. During dinner, see if anyone has examples of that word in action.
6. Make a Gratitude Garland
Cut colorful paper strips and write something or someone you’re grateful for each day. Staple or tape them into a chain and hang it up — watch your “gratitude chain” grow over time.
7. Read Books with Themes of Helping and Compassion
After the story, talk about ways to be like the characters.