Encourage your kids to include others with these FUN and FREE Activities
Full lesson including examples, activities, and why including others is so important + FREE resources to make teaching this important skill EASY!
Including others, even if they have different interests or experiences, helps everyone to feel loved, valued, and worthy of friendship and connection.
Talking with young people about what it means to exclude and how to include others helps build empathy and compassion and can prevent unintentional exclusion.[4] Teaching students and staff to be aware of their own actions will help reduce any unintentional exclusion on their part. – Inclusive School Communities
Example:
You: You notice Johnny sitting by himself at a table at lunch. He is new at school and hasn’t made many friends yet.
Good Response:
You: You walk over and invite him to sit with you and your friends. He walks over and you discover that you both like to play soccer. He invites you to come play with him. You become great friends!
Bad Response:
You: You notice Johnny, but decide someone else will sit by him. No one ends up sitting by him and Jonny continues to feel sad all by himself.
Activity:
Role Play Situations Where you Could Include Others
Instructions: Place cut out situations where others might need to be included in a jar. [Create the situations yourself or encourage the kids to do so for an extra challenge]. Take turns drawing a situation and having different people act out those involved.
Possible Situations:
- Someone is sitting alone on the bus.
- At recess a child doesn’t get picked to be on a team.
- A boy in a wheelchair is left to watch others while they play.
- Your younger sibling doesn’t have friends over to play with but you do.
- Your cousin across the country has been having a hard time making friends, what could you do to connect and reach out to them?
Takeaway: Including others can be very easy with the right skills and practice. It is a great way to make new friends and discover similarities, or learn from people that are different from you and become a more well-rounded person.
Discussion Questions:
- What are some things that make it difficult for you to include others?
- Why do you think including others is important?
- Have you had an experience where others included you? How did you feel?
- How can we be inclusive this week?
Book Recommendation:
“How to Eat a Cupcake” – Jeana Atkison
Resources for this Week:
Receive these for FREE by clicking the button below + you will receive new resources each week for each week’s theme.
Plant Daily Seeds of Kindness Poster Log:
As your kids complete acts of kindness either from drawing ideas from the jar below, or coming up with ideas on their own, they can color in a seed. You can encourage them to do one a day, or more if you would like. Consider having a reward planned when all the seeds are colored in, but the habits of kindness they will develop are the ultimate reward! We have printable options for 24 x 18 in and 36 x 24 in.
Jar + Seeds
Place this week’s label on the jar and then cut out the seeds or create your own for kids to pull out each day. Each seed has an idea of how to be a good listener for the day, to practice the skill and develop a new habit of listening to serve.
- Practice Making Eye Contact while listening.
- Ask someone a question to get to know them.
- Set aside 5 min to listen to someone having a bad day.
- Call someone you haven’t talked to in a while.
- Visit a neighbor and listen.
- Ask someone a clarifying question as you listen to them.
How to Include Others Activity Page
Not just a coloring page. This activity page is a review of how we include others + tactile practice folding, coloring, and cutting. Discuss with kids ways to include others.
Kindness Journal Pages
A summary of the lesson included on this page + activities, riddles, games, writing prompts, and more! These pages are taken from our Kindness Journal which is available for purchase through Amazon. If you don’t want to print your own pages each week, click the button below!
- Weekly topic on kindness to work on individually or as a family/classroom.
- Lesson detailing why it is important to work on that area of kindness, how to do so, and an example.
- Activity page including games, activities, writing, and more!
- Weekly Journal Page to write about the week
- Collectable quote page to hang on the wall as a reminder of the week’s topic.
