Being kind is such a wonderful thing to teach our kids. As well as making them feel good about themselves, practising kindness is a fantastic way for them to make a positive impact on the people and the world around them.
I’m thrilled to be sharing an extract from Create Your Own Kindness, a brilliant new book from Becky Goddard-Hill, which helps kids learn about and practice kindness in lots of fun ways.
Create Your Own Kindness
Create Your own Kindness is a fun, practical activity book aimed at 6-12 year olds. It contains 50 activities, all designed to encourage kids to be kind to themselves, to other people and to the whole world. It’s published by Harper Collins and written by children’s therapist and wellbeing author Becky Goddard-Hill. Becky is also a former social worker and child development trainer, so you can be confident that the activities and the principles behind them are grounded in expertise.
Each activity starts with an inspiring quote, takes you through the activity itself, and explains the science behind how and why it works. Kids can work through the activities in order, or dip in and out. The tone is lively and fun, and the layout is bright and engaging – perfect for the target age range.
Here’s the link to the book if you’d like to get hold of a copy.
I’m sharing one of the activities from Create You Own Kindness in this post. In it, Becky explains how we can help our kids show kindness to the earth by encouraging them to take care of its more vulnerable creatures.
Beautiful Brilliant Butterflies
Butterflies need our help
Numbers of butterflies have decreased over recent years due to pollution, changing weather patterns and more of the countryside being built on. The good news, though, is that even people with tiny gardens can actually provide them with a lot of what they need.
How to help butterflies
There are 3 ways you can help butterflies:
- Leave out ripe fruit for them such over-ripe pears, plums and apples.
- Don’t use chemical sprays on plants that are flowering.
- Plant flowers that they love, such as bluebells, lavender, cornflowers, primroses and buddleia.
How to make a butterfly feeder
You will need:
- A sponge
- 1 cup water
- 3 teaspoons of sugar
- String
- Boil the kettle and pour out a cup of water (ask an adult to help).
- Stir in 3 teaspoons of sugar until dissolved and leave to cool.
- Cut your sponge into small pieces and poke a hole in each one.
- Cut a 10cm piece of string and push it through the hole in the sponge.
- Dip the sponge in syrup and let it soak it up.
- Hang it somewhere shady, near flowers if possible, so the butterflies can have a drink.
Create your own kindness… by taking care of nature and all her creatures whenever and wherever you can.
This is such a lovely kids nature activity – and a perfect way to practice kindness by thinking about the world around us and how we can help to support it.
I think Create You Own Kindness is a fantastic resource for helping kids practice self-care and reach out to others in a positive way. As an added bonus, it’s a great activity book that the whole family can have fun with and benefit from.
Create Your Own Kindness is available now from Amazon and all good bookshops.
Create You Own Kindness book tour
To celebrate the launch of Create Your Own Kindness, Becky has organised a virtual book tour. For every day of the tour, a blogger will be previewing an activity from the book, so you can find out more about the different tools and ideas and maybe have a go yourself. Here’s a list of all the bloggers taking part:
4/3 Emma and 3
5/3 Red Ted Art
6/3 We’re Going On an Adventure
10/3 Thrifty Mum
12/3 Diary of the Dad
14/3 Rainy Day Mum
More great books to support kids
Becky has also co-written a happiness boosting book called Create Your Own Happy, and Create Your Own Calm, which is aimed at helping kids deal with their feelings and develop ways to feel calmer.
And if you’re a parent of teenagers, you might also like to check out my post on Be Happy Be You.
What’s your favourite way to send a little bit of kindness into the world?
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