Kindness Teaching Resources

Promote kindness and compassion in your classroom with kindness activities for kids, worksheets, printables, and more for elementary school teachers.

This collection of social and emotional learning resources was developed by teachers, for teachers, with an eye on helping students understand what it means to be kind helping teachers build lessons and discussions about empathy and compassion into their curriculum.

Looking for tips on teaching kindness in your classroom? Read on for a primer from our teacher team!

How Do You Teach Kindness?

Explicit kindness instruction is an important part of creating a warm and supportive classroom environment. So how do you do that? Here are some tips from our teacher team.

1. Model kindness yourself as a teacher.
2. Provide students with opportunities to practice kindness, whether it's through group activities in the classroom or service projects at school or at home.
3. Encourage and reward acts of kindness as you notice them in your classroom to reinforce the behavior.
4. Practice mindfulness in the classroom to help your students be more aware of their emotions and actions and to respond with kindness in difficult situations.
5. Build an inclusive classroom environment and teach about different cultures and cultural differences. Understanding the diversity around them helps our students to be more kind and respectful to others.
6. Incorporate empathy and compassion into the curriculum: Make a point to discuss feelings, teach active listening skills, and encourage perspective-taking as part of the skillsets you are helping students to build.
7. Approach classroom events through a kindness lens, whether it be ensuring Valentine's Day celebrations focus on expressing kindness to classmates or using Thanksgiving as a chance for students to do something kind for others.