Welcome to Child-Generated Kindness Curricula: Supplemental Materials

The numerous research data in psychology, neuroscience, and specifically, the science of kindness demonstrate the complexity of kindness and that we have much to explore. The foundation for these curricula originates from the utterances, definitions of kindness, and actions from the children who submitted entries to this multimedia showcase. These examples of kindness enable students to sharpen, practice, and cultivate their innate kindness abilities.

These supplemental curricula materials encompass the ideas about how giving and receiving kind expressions and actions are essential to one’s overall emotional and physical health as well as belonging in a community. The curricula also reflect that kindness, like sneezes and smiles, is contagious. As said by a 6-year old Joshua from Malaysia: Kind=Peace + Unity + Love.

This is how children describe kindness:

As discussed by an international contingent of our children participants, “kindness” could be described in at least three different ways – comparison, action, and projection.

As a comparison to something clear and dear to children, “Kindness is as good as gold”, “Kindness is friendship,” or “Kindness is holding hands in the dark.”

It is also expressed in the form of a suggested action, “Kindness is doing good for others and not expecting anything in return”, “Kindness is spreading sunshine into people’s lives regardless of the weather”, or “Sharing kindness is bringing happiness.”

As a projection, “If you help people, they will help you too – this is what I call kindness”, or “Let’s celebrate 2022 as the year of love and kindness.”

Four unique qualities that define these materials as child-generated:

I. 7 Themes derived from children’s Kindness Showcase entries emerged after analyzing 1,000+ entries to the website. They represent 1,800+ children aged 3-18 from 45 countries worldwide. These themes serve as a basis for the curricula.

II. Key Concepts/Words that the children used in their individual, group or family entries are critical components to the instruction and teacher prompting used in each lesson.

III. Child-Generated Lessons can either be implemented using a child-generated idea with specific prompts from the teacher or a teacher-generated idea due to the amount of time the teacher can spend on supporting a student-generated idea and/or the age and the maturity of the students.

IV. Examples from the Kindness Showcase website. Each lesson, with the exception of a Mini-Kindness Boost, includes entries from the Kindness Showcase as examples. These examples are from all over the world and represent multiple nationalities and cultures.

4 Lesson Formats

There are four lessons for each theme which are broken down by the following time segments so a teacher can use these supplemental materials whenever they have a free moment:

• Mini-Kindness Boost: 5-10 minutes
• Kindness Boost: 10-20 minutes
• Super Kindness Boost: 20-30 minutes
• Kindness Immersion: 15 minutes a day for 1-4 weeks or a large pocket of time like 90 minutes.

Meet Our Student and Teacher Participants and Watch Some of Their Weekly Activities Worldwide