I can’t help but notice that the U.S. elections and World Kindness day happen less than a fortnight of each other. This holiday is observed in many countries throughout the world. The idea behind it is to be kind to yourself, other people, and our planet. With that in mind, I wanted to embark on designing a simple World Kindness Day activity for students.
Why I Started This World Kindness Day Project
Kindness Nation: That’s what I’m searching for right now, a nation where kindness is the norm and disagreement doesn’t need to foil into disparagement. I’ll be honest and say that this school year has been tougher than others beyond the normal daily stressors.
Every election season changes the climate of my school. My middle schoolers spend an inordinate amount of time talking divisively about politics.
Don’t get me wrong. I love that they would want to broaden their interest in civics. But the problem lies in the intersection of civics and cultural awareness. Their inability to maintain kindness, empathy, and compassion for people unlike themselves has been difficult to witness. It doesn’t escape my mind that World Kindness Day falls a little more than a week after Election Day.
As a result, some of the things that they’ve said have been downright…eye-opening. And in truth, it reminds me of things I heard growing up. Both the town I work in and the one I’m from are small coastal/bayshore towns with predominantly white, middle-class families. And both are devoid of cultural diversity. So I get it because I’ve lived it, even though I don’t agree with it.
I try to remember that a lot of what they’re saying is regurgitated from other sources like tv, social media, friends, parents, and others in their community.
But it can sometimes feel like those influences outweigh my ability as an art educator to strike a chord of respect for all people.
I say this because of the limited amount of time I spend with them. It sometimes feels like a losing battle. I wanted to do something to counteract that feeling.
World Kindness Day Art Project
In thinking about a Kindness Nation, I reflected on how all people in our society come together to make a cohesive whole, like pieces of a puzzle joined to form a visual statement.
Each plays a part in the fabric of a nation. Each brings with it a rich history of tradition, social norms, culture, language, religion, and a shared experience in history which shapes and informs their understanding of their world.
To that end, I decided to create a World Kindness Day craft for other struggling elementary teachers that encompasses cultural diversity and inclusiveness.
I wanted it to visually illustrate the concept of being pieces of a puzzle as one.
This poster project aims to bring students together to create a unified statement about diversity in our classroom and the world at large.
Creating the World Kindness Day Poster
To create it, simply print out the 4 poster pages and the roll-a-dice game included. Working in small groups, students take turns rolling a die to select a pattern for the sleeve cuff of each puzzle piece. Encourage your students to use multicultural crayons to fill in the hands.
I chose to color in my example using blue and green so that the center part feels symbolically like an Earth, showing how cultural diversity and inclusiveness should be inherent everywhere.
The Kindness Nation poster project could work for all students in kindergarten through fifth grade. I could see this project being a good unifying tool in your classroom if you have a handful of students of diverse background struggling to maintain cultural sensitivity. It would be a great pairing with Martin Luther King Jr. activities, too.
If you’re wanting to do it with your entire class, consider breaking them up into groups of 2 and 4. Give each group the materials and watch them create it. Then once completed, march your students around the school hanging the posters. We could all use a little reminder that a Kindness Nation should exist everywhere.
Activities for World Kindness Day
Here are some 7th grade students working on the posters. This was a low-functioning, special needs group I taught once a week. I decided to pre-trace the pieces onto a large sheet of paper so all they had to do was color it in one class period. Same end result, just differentiated for their needs. They did such a great job!
If you liked this, you can grab your own copy of the Kindness Nation poster project. The download also includes a roll and draw game, step-by-step pictures, and a PowerPoint that you can use to teach the lesson.
- And remember: Kindness has no expiration date, so spread some today!
Thank you so much for this inspirational post and this amazing free resource! Multicultural hands joining together to make a better world – what a beautiful visual image for our children to create and internalize!