30 Random Acts of Kindness for Kids (Free Printable Kindness Tracker!)

Today, February 17th, is National Random Acts of Kindness Day, and this whole week (February 16-23) is National Random Acts of Kindness Week. The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation’s motto is ‘make kindness the norm.’ Read that motto again and really let it sink in. Make kindness the norm.

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I hate that we have to work to make it the norm; I wish that being kind was just a typical norm for everyone. When I ask myself how we make that happen, I always come back to this:

it’s all in the way we are raising the next generation.

I am a huge advocate of teaching children kindness and empathy; it’s one of my favorite things to write about and to do with my son. I truly believe that, if we teach our children to look for little, random ways to do kind things, we will naturally raise kind humans. Make it part of the world you model for your children, and it will become part of their world.

With that said, I’ve created a 30 Random Acts of Kindness for Kids tracker and challenge. 

Here’s how it works:

• Print the list of ideas and the month-long tracker. (Click the images below to download your 30 Random Acts of Kindness for Kids tracker)

I’ve just number it by days so you can start it on any day of any month.

• Read a book with your child to help them understand what acts of kindness are and why they’re important.

Some suggestions: Have You Filled a Bucket Today?; One Drop of Kindness (perfect for kids for whom kindness does not come easily); Be Kind ( help your child understand what ‘being kind’ means); Each Kindness (my favorite if your kids are a bit older – not everything is tied up in a neat package in this story); and You Are Kind by Dr. Seuss (a beautiful book to celebrate your child’s kindness).

• Make a pact with your child to do one act of kindness for the next 30 days.

You can change any ideas on the list to ones that work better for you, and you can also repeat any ideas that your children really love.

• Use the tracker to record the random acts of kindness that your child completes each day. 

You can write down each act of kindness on the daily tracker. I recommend that, even if they decide to do more than one a day, you still make sure that they do at least one each day for 30 days. My reason for this is: research shows that it takes 66 days on average to make a new habit automatic. So, you want to make sure your child is doing kind things every single day for as long as possible to have the best chance of helping them create a real, authentic new habit of looking for ways to show kindness.

• When your child completes the 30 days, give them a certificate of kindness.

Even if it was not 30 days in a row – things happen, that’s real life – applaud your child for finding 30 opportunities to be kind to the people in his or her life. You can search ‘kindness award’ on Pinterest and find all sorts of free printables. I don’t recommend giving your child a reward, like a book or toy or anything like that, because the idea is to teach them to be intrinsically motivated to be kind.

SO. What are you waiting for? It’s winter, we’re all spending a lot of time inside, so that gives you a lot of chances to read books with your child and start finding ways to show little bits of random kindness every single day. If you would like even more ideas of random acts of kindness, check out these posts here and here.

If you like these 30 Random Acts of Kindness for Kids, make sure to check out the rest of my posts! And subscribe so that you don’t miss anything important. 

I’d also love for you to share a photo over on Instagram if you give this a try with your family!