How to Teach Kindness to Kids? 30 Activities to Build Empathy

Math. Writing. Kindness.

What do these three things have in common?

They're all skills that can be taught, practiced, and strengthened. Of course, we make mistakes while learning all three, and that's how we grow, no matter our age.

We've organized these 30 kindness activities by setting, so you can quickly find the right activity for home, the classroom, or your community.

Table of Content

1. What Are Kindness Activities for Kids?

2. Why Teaching Kindness Matters and Does Rewarding It Backfire?

3. How to Teach Kindness to Kids?

4. What are 8 Kindness Activities for Kids at Home?

5. What are 8 Kindness Activities for the Classroom?

6. What are 7 Community Kindness Activities for Kids?

7. What are 7 Simple Kindness Habits Kids Can Practice Every Day?

8. How Kindness Activities Build Empathy and Emotional Resilience?

9. Frequently Asked Questions About Kindness Activities for Kids

Why Teaching Kindness Matters and Does Rewarding It Backfire?

Kindness isn’t just good manners.

According to Layous et al. (2012), children who performed acts of kindness toward peers showed significant gains in peer acceptance over a four-week period—a finding with real implications for children who struggle socially. Post (2005) found that altruistic behavior correlates with greater happiness, health, and longevity over time.

But here’s the research finding that surprises most parents and teachers: rewarding kindness can undermine it. Deci, Koestner, and Ryan’s (1999) landmark meta-analysis found that offering tangible rewards for behaviors reduces intrinsic motivation.

When children receive sticker charts or prizes for kind behavior, they begin to see kindness as a transaction: something they do to earn something else. When the rewards stop, the behavior often stops too.

This doesn’t mean you should never acknowledge kind behavior.
Specific, sincere verbal acknowledgment an reinforce kindness without creating dependency. Example: “I noticed you included Jamie when no one else did. That took real courage.”

The goal is for kindness to feel rewarding in itself. Keep this in mind as you work through the activities below. The aim isn’t compliance, it’s conviction.

How to Teach Kindness to Kids?

Kindness grows through everyday actions, not one-time lessons.

Whether you're a parent or a teacher, these activities help children practice empathy, gratitude, generosity, and respect in real-life situations.

Check out the 30 kindness activities we’ve organized by setting—home, the classroom, the community, and everyday habits—so you can easily find ideas that fit your child's age and routine.

What are 8 Kindness Activities for Kids at Home

These activities are designed for parents and caregivers to do alongside their children. They work best when framed as shared experiences rather than assigned tasks.

1. Write a Letter to Someone You Appreciate

Best for: Ages 5 and up

Many adults don’t realize how much they matter to the children around them. This activity teaches children to express gratitude while giving them a concrete act of kindness they can complete and deliver.

1. Ask your child: “Name an adult—other than me—who is important to you. Why?” 

2. Once they’ve decided (and it needs to be their decision for the gratitude to feel genuine), have them write a note or draw a picture that explains specifically why they appreciate that person. 

3. Mail it or hand-deliver it together. If you are a teacher, consider asking your kids to write a letter to another staff member at school.

For more on building this kind of intentional family connection, see our guide to raising kind and caring children.

2. Create a Compliment Board

Best for: Ages 5 and up

Truly effective kindness activities for kids will challenge children to dig deep and really think about what they appreciate about others. A compliment board can be a great avenue for generating kind thinking patterns.

• Create a spot in your house or classroom where children can put notes saying something positive about, or giving thanks to, someone else. If you're in a classroom, you could use envelopes for individual students.
• Leave this up for the rest of the month or longer if you like.
• These notes should be sincere and never forced; they should be written when someone wants to say something kind.
• Try to keep it from becoming a competition. Perhaps make the notes anonymous or decide ahead of time who will receive compliments from the rest of the group that day or week.

Note to teachers: Is there someone who'll never get these notes? Get to the root of the issue and make sure it's fixed before starting this activity.

3. Plant Something Together

Best for: Ages 4 and up

For many children, caring for a plant is their first experience of nurturing something living and of learning that consistent small acts of care (watering, sunlight, attention) create something beautiful over time.

1. Choose a hardy plant, especially for younger or more forgetful kids. Succulents are a great starting point. 

2. Make the plant the child’s full responsibility. 

3. If it dies, treat it as a growth mindset moment, not a failure: talk about what happened, what was in their control, and try again with a new plant.

4. Start a Gratitude Journal

Best for: Ages 6 and up

When children regularly notice what they’re grateful for, they become more attuned to the positive around them—including the kindness of others. Have your child write two or three things they’re grateful for at the end of each day.

The Big Life Journal (ages 7–10) includes structured daily prompts for gratitude, growth mindset reflection, and self-expression—making it one of the most research-aligned tools for building the emotional habits that kindness grows from.


Alternatively, you can create a gratitude jar, where kids write what they’re grateful for on slips of paper to place in the jar. Watch as the jar—and their kindness—fills up!

5. Watch a Movie About Kindness or Overcoming Obstacles

Best for: Ages 5 and up

Films like Inside Out, Wonder, Finding Nemo, and The Karate Kid show characters navigating unkindness, choosing the harder right over the easier wrong, and growing through failure.

Watch one together, then let your child guide the conversation afterward.
a. What acts of kindness did they notice?
b. Where did someone choose not to be kind—and what happened as a result?

6. Discuss What You Can and Cannot Control

Best for: Ages 7 and up

Sometimes children are unkind because of something outside their control: a bad day, a difficult morning, a fight with a sibling.These things are depleting their emotional reserves.

This activity helps children build self-awareness about the relationship between their inner state and their outward behavior.

1. Have an open conversation about a time you were unkind because of what was happening around you.

2.  What could you have done differently? 

3. What was in your control? 

4. Modeling this kind of reflection normalizes the process for your child. 

For more strategies on emotional resilience, see our article on how to raise resilient kids who never give up.

7. Practice Conflict Resolution with Role-Play

Best for: Ages 5 and up

No matter how many kindness activities children practice, conflict is inevitable. This activity gives children a safe space to rehearse the language of repair before they need it in real life.

1. Introducing “I feel ___ when you____.” statements.
   Ex.: “I feel hurt when you don’t include me” rather than “You always leave me out.” 

2. Model what this sounds like, then role-play common scenarios your child encounters—at school, on the playground, or with siblings. 

3. Practicing the language in advance means they’re more likely to use it when it matters.

8. Teach T.H.I.N.K. Before You Speak

Best for: Ages 6 and up

"T.H.I.N.K." means before you say anything (in person or online), you should ask yourself if what you're about to say is:

• True

• Helpful

• Inspiring

• Necessary

• Kind

This five-step check helps children slow down and consider the impact of their words before they leave their mouths (or fingertips).

Tip: Walk through a real or hypothetical social media comment together. Score it on the T.H.I.N.K. scale—how many letters does it earn? This works especially well for tweens navigating digital communication for the first time.

What are 8 Kindness Activities for the Classroom

These activities are designed for teachers, school counselors, and educators building a culture of kindness in classroom settings. Most can be completed in a single class period and adapted for a range of grade levels.

9. Teach the Difference Between Kind and Nice

Best for: Ages 6 and up

This is one of the most powerful distinctions you can teach—and one many adults haven’t thought through either.

Nice: doing what is expected to please those around you.

Kind: showing empathy and being willing to stand up for what is right.

1. Create a two-column poster with “Kind” on one side and “Nice” on the other. 

2. Have students write suggestions on sticky notes and place them in the column where they think they belong. 

3. Discuss each note. It’s okay to put some in the middle, because context matters. 

4. Hang the completed poster somewhere visible for the rest of the term.

10. Play a Cooperative Game

Best for: Ages 5 and up

In cooperative games, the whole team wins or loses together—making them one of the most effective tools for teaching active listening, shared decision-making, and graceful disagreement.

Recommended options:

• For younger kids (ages 4–8): Outfoxed!, Friends and Neighbors: The Helping Game, Gnomes at Night

• For older kids (ages 9+): Mysterium, Forbidden Island

Debrief after playing: 

1. What did your team do well? 

2. What was hard? 

3. Where did you disagree—and how did you work through it?

11. Read and Discuss a Book About Kindness

Best for: Ages 4 and up

Books give children a safe distance from which to observe difficult emotions and choices. They create a shared vocabulary for discussing kindness in the weeks that follow. Look for books where kindness isn’t just the theme but the tension.

Suggestions by age:

• Early readers (ages 4–8): The Rabbit Listened, Last Stop on Market Street, The World Needs More Purple People

• Tweens and teens (ages 10+): Wonder, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Wrinkle in Time

For a curated list of kindness books by age and theme, see our resource on kindness books and activities for children.

12. Peer Teaching: Help Other Kids

Best for: Ages 6 and up

Create a “partner project” where each student reads a story or learns a skill, then teaches their partner. You can also pair older students with younger ones for reading support or project help.

When children help other children meet their goals, they develop patience, responsibility, and a genuine investment in each other’s success. All of which are expressions of kindness in action.

13. Teach Empathy Through Perspective-Taking

Best for: Ages 4 and up

Empathy begins with seeing the world through someone else's eyes.

a. Start with a story, picture book, movie scene, classroom conflict, or real-life situation, then invite children to imagine what each person might be thinking and feeling.

b. Ask questions like, "How do you think they felt?", "Why do you think they acted that way?", and "What could you do to help?"

For a deeper conversation on this topic, listen to our podcast episode on teaching empathy and kindness to kids.

Younger children can practice with picture books or emotion cards. 
Older students can explore current events or social situations by discussing how different people might experience the same event.

14. Discuss Differences and Diversity

Best for: Ages 7 and up

Children naturally notice differences. The goal isn't to ignore them—it's to teach children to respond with curiosity, kindness, and respect.

Create simple role-play scenarios based on situations children may encounter at school or in the community. For example: A new classmate speaks a different language. Someone uses a wheelchair. A child celebrates a different holiday. Ask, "What could you say?" or "How could you help them feel included?"

If your child asks a question you can't answer, research it together. Showing that you're willing to learn models both a growth mindset and respect for others.

15. Explore Misguided Kindness

Best for: Ages 9 and up

Sometimes an act of kindness isn’t as kind as we think. This activity invites older students to grapple with the complexity of well-intentioned behavior.

• Present short scenarios such as helping someone without asking first, hugging someone who doesn't like hugs, or making a compliment that feels uncomfortable.

•  In small groups, ask students: Was the intention kind? How might the other person feel? What could you do differently? 

• End by sharing one more respectful or inclusive response with the class.

16. Learn About Bullying and How to Respond

Best for: Ages 8 and up

For something to qualify as bullying, it must be repeated, intentional, and involve a power imbalance. Students need to understand this definition clearly because not every conflict is bullying, and labeling it incorrectly can make resolution harder.

Focus on three things: recognizing the signs, knowing when and how to intervene safely, and understanding the root causes of bullying behavior.

Children who understand that bullying often comes from a place of pain are better equipped to respond with empathy rather than retaliation.

Building genuine confidence is central to this work. Children who feel secure in who they are are less likely to bully and more likely to stand up for others. See our article on what confidence is and how to build it in kids for related strategies.

What are 7 Community Kindness Activities for Kids

These activities extend kindness beyond the home and classroom into the wider world. They work well as family projects, school field trips, or service learning opportunities.

17. Volunteer as a Family or Class

Best for: Ages 5 and up

Rather than assigning a volunteer location, let your child or students help choose where to give their time. 

1. What matters most to them? Animals, older adults, the environment, food security?

2. Once they’ve decided, research options together and sign up.

3. After volunteering, debrief: What did you notice? How did it feel? If it was a good fit, consider making it a regular commitment. 

Recurring service creates stronger empathy development than one-off events.

18. Show Kindness to Service Workers

Best for: Ages 5 and up

Turn a routine errand into a kindness practice. If you notice items left on a store floor, have your child tidy them. Let them take the lead at checkout by practicing eye contact, a greeting, and a genuine thank-you.

For older children, discuss what a day in customer service might actually involve.
Ask: if this were your job, how would you want to be treated? This simple question tends to land with kids in a way that abstract appeals to manners often don’t.

19. Attend a Live Performance Together

Best for: Ages 6 and up

Keep an eye out for performances in your area. Read their synopses and determine if kindness could be a theme. If the play has a relevant online study guide available, even better!

A few live theatre options to help teach kindness (and frequently performed) are:

• A Christmas Carol (Note: there are versions for younger audiences, which are far shorter than the original.)

• High School Musical

• Puffs! (Note: there's a version for younger audiences and a version for older ones. Make sure you know which one you're seeing.)

Live performance develops empathy in a distinct way: watching real people embody vulnerability and emotion creates a quality of connection that screen-based media doesn’t replicate.

20. Create and Share Growth Mindset Rocks

Best for: Ages 4 and up

Growth mindset rocks are stones that children paint and write short messages on. For example: “You’ve got this,” “Keep going,” “You rock!” Place them in a public space (with permission) or your yard with a sign inviting people to take one.

This activity combines creative expression with an anonymous act of kindness—a child never knows who their rock will reach or what someone was going through when they found it.

For the growth mindset concepts that pair naturally with this activity, see what it means to have a growth mindset and our collection of growth mindset activities for kids.

21. Attend a Cultural Event

Best for: Ages 6 and up

Attend a public event organized by people from a different cultural background than your child’s. This could be a parade, a festival, a food fair, or a community celebration. If there are educational booths, visit them.

Striving to understand people who are different from ourselves goes deeper than tolerance or acceptance—it’s an active practice of curiosity that builds both empathy and humility. This is one of the most underrated kindness activities on this list.

22. Find a Pen Pal

Best for: Ages 7 and up

Pen pals give children time to think about what they want to say before saying it. Without the immediacy of a text message or a face-to-face conversation, children develop the habit of intentional communication.

Meeting a new person from a different background, school, or country through letters also builds the perspective-taking muscles that empathy depends on. Search for vetted pen pal programs through your school or local library.

23. Learn Basic First Aid

Best for: Ages 10 and up

Learning first aid is a practical act of kindness—one that prepares children to help others in moments of real need. If possible, arrange for a professional (such as a certified trainer from the American Red Cross) to lead this session.

Learn the basics: how to call for help, how to apply pressure to a wound, the signs of choking. This builds a sense of capability and responsibility that extends well beyond the lesson itself.

What are 7 Simple Kindness Habits Kids Can Practice Every Day

These activities are smaller in scope but high in impact when practiced consistently. They don’t require planning or supplies—just intention and a few minutes each day.

24. Practice Mindfulness Daily

Best for: Ages 5 and up

Feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or emotionally depleted makes kindness harder. Mindfulness—whether through breathing exercises, body scans, or quiet reflection—helps children reconnect with themselves so they have more to give others.

• For younger children, try “belly breathing” or a simple body scan: name five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear. 

• Older children and teens may benefit from listening to our podcast on mindfulness or journaling.
  
  

25. A Daily Self-Love Check-In

Best for: Ages 6 and up

It’s much easier to be kind to others when you’re kind to yourself.

Build a brief daily check-in into your child’s routine: “How are you feeling right now? What do you need today?” This practice normalizes emotional self-awareness and builds the internal resources that kindness requires.

For teens, this connects directly to self-esteem and confidence development. See our articles on confidence-building activities for kids and how to build self-esteem and confidence in teens for related exercises.

26. Play a Competitive Game with Good Sportsmanship

Best for: Ages 5 and up

Find a competitive board game, card game, or video game your family or class enjoys and play it genuinely—no steering the outcome. Before starting, discuss what it means to be a good winner and a gracious loser.

Children who learn to manage the emotions of winning and losing in low-stakes contexts like a game are building the emotional regulation skills they’ll need in far higher-stakes situations later. Let them feel both sides.

27. Spend Intentional Time with Friends

Best for: Ages 4 and up

There are few better practice grounds for kindness than unstructured time with peers. Children making decisions together are doing emotional work. For instance, they can practice choosing a game, navigating disagreement, noticing when someone feels left out.

• Arrange playdates or allow free play time. 

• Resist the urge to over-direct. 

• Let them navigate. 

• Step in only when genuinely needed. 

The friction of peer interaction is where kindness skills are actually built.

28. Build Grit Through Everyday Challenges

Best for: Ages 5 and up

Choosing kindness every day is hard. 

Some days the low road looks very appealing. Grit and resilience are what allow children to push through those moments and return to the higher, kinder choice.

Help children identify small daily challenges as opportunities to build this muscle—not as failures when they struggle. For practical strategies, see our guides on activities for grit and resilience in children and how to build resilience in children and teens.

29. Know When to Stand Up for Yourself

Best for: Ages 7 and up

This activity teaches children that true kindness includes kindness to themselves.

There are moments when being kind to others would require being unkind to yourself. Children need both the language and the confidence to recognize and navigate those moments.

• Practice saying “no” and leaving a situation that doesn’t feel right. 

• Role-play scenarios: what if someone you don’t know asks for help in a way that feels uncomfortable? What if a friend wants you to do something you know is wrong?

• Building the confidence to set boundaries is itself an act of self-respect. 

See our collection of confidence-building activities for kids for related exercises.

30. End the Day with Reflection

Best for: Ages 5 and up

At the end of each day, ask your child one simple question: “Did you do something kind to others today?” Or: “Did someone do something kind for yourself?”

This brief ritual builds the habit of noticing, which is the first step toward practicing kindness more intentionally.

Over time, these small daily reflections accumulate into something significant: a child who moves through the world looking for opportunities to be kind, rather than waiting to be asked.

How Kindness Activities Build Empathy and Emotional Resilience

The activities in this article aren’t just feel-good exercises. They’re grounded in how the developing brain actually works.

When a child performs an act of kindness, the brain releases oxytocin (sometimes called the “bonding hormone”), serotonin, and dopamine—neurochemicals associated with connection, calm, and reward.

Post (2005) describes this as the “helper’s high”: a measurable boost in mood and well-being that comes from altruistic behavior. Curry et al. (2018) confirmed this in his research that performing acts of kindness reliably increases the well-being of the person doing them, not just the recipient.

The deeper effect is in the empathy circuits. Decety and Michalska (2010) traced the neurodevelopmental changes in the empathy and sympathy circuits from childhood through adulthood, finding that these circuits are actively shaped by experience. The more children practice perspective-taking and prosocial behavior, the more natural it becomes.

This is why the activities in this article work best when they’re woven into daily and weekly routines rather than treated as one-off events. Kindness, like any skill, requires repetition to consolidate.

Turn Kindness Into a Daily Habit

The activities in this article are a great place to start. Big Life Journal helps children continue building kindness, empathy, and emotional resilience through guided reflection and meaningful parent-child conversations.

References

Curry, O. S., Rowland, L. A., Van Lissa, C. J., Zlotowitz, S., McAlaney, J., & Whitehouse, H. (2018). Happy to help? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of performing acts of kindness on the well-being of the actor. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76, 320–329. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.02.014

Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(3), 627–668. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.3.627

Decety, J., & Michalska, K. J. (2010). Neurodevelopmental changes in the circuits underlying empathy and sympathy from childhood to adulthood. Developmental Science, 13(6), 886–899. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00940.

Eisenberg, N., & Fabes, R. A. (1998). Prosocial development. In W. Damon & N. Eisenberg (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development (5th ed., pp. 701–778). Wiley.

Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674

Layous, K., Nelson, S. K., Oberle, E., Schonert-Reichl, K. A., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2012). Kindness counts: Prompting prosocial behavior in preadolescents boosts peer acceptance and well-being. PLOS ONE, 7(12), e51380. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051380

Nelson, S. K., Layous, K., Cole, S. W., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2016). Do unto others or treat yourself? The effects of prosocial and self-focused behavior on psychological flourishing. Emotion, 16(6), 850–861. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000178

Post, S. G. (2005). Altruism, happiness, and health: It’s good to be good. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 12(2), 66–77. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327558ijbm1202_4

Zahn-Waxler, C., Radke-Yarrow, M., Wagner, E., & Chapman, M. (1992). Development of concern for others. Developmental Psychology, 28(1), 126–136. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.28.1.126

About the Author

Alexandra Eidens is the founder of Big Life Journal and an advocate for applying growth mindset research to children's development. Her work has been featured in The New York Times and The Today Show. Through Big Life Journal, she translates research from psychologists such as Carol Dweck into therapist-reviewed, evidence-based tools and strategies that help children build resilience, adaptability, confidence, emotional intelligence, and a growth mindset.