Mind Moose

Digital mental health & wellbeing tools for primary school children.

Children’s Mental Health Week Kindness Quotes and Slogans Activity

By

Kindness-Matters
Suitability
This activity can be used for any age pupil but can be easily adapted for younger pupils by providing different sentence starters for children to use to help them come up with their own quotes.

Overview
This activity asks pupils to create a slogan or quote about kindness and being kind to others. It encourages children to think about what the definition of kindness is and how this can relate to other people. It helps them to think about acts of kindness.

Introduction

  • Ask pairs of pupils to think about what kindness means to them.
  • Discuss as a class and decide on a definition.
  • Share some of the ways that kindness can be shown? E.g. kindness can be an action, a small action, which we make a choice to help somebody and make them feel better about themselves. It can have a big impact on people around us.

What does kindness look like?

  • Ask 2 pupils to come to the front and give them a toy to play with.
  • Prime one of the pupils to snatch the toy from the other.
  • Discuss how that felt.
  • Ask the pupils to model how playing with the toy with kindness might look in contrast.
  • If you wish, give a toy to all pairs to repeat.

Main

  • Show pupils some different quotes about kindness and acts of kindness. E.g.No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. – Aesop.
  • Discuss as a class what these might mean.
  • Show pupils some different slogans about kindness. Discuss with the children what these might mean. E.g. Kindness can change the world. (An online search for ‘kindness quotes and slogans for children‘ returns many examples to use. And there are some more here.)
  • Ask pupils to think/pair/share what the difference is between a slogan and a quote?
  • A quote is a saying or a statement of somebody’s thoughts or opinions. A slogan is used by an organisation usually as a way of attracting attention. It is a phrase which is easily remembered.
  • Ask pupils to group different statements and phrases into quotes and slogans.
  • Invite them to identify and explain why they would be quotes or slogans and explain?

Creating a kindness quote or slogan

  • Give out appropriate materials and ask pupils to design their own quotes and/or slogans about kindness for a display in the classroom.
  • To help those who may struggle to come up with their own ideas, pupils could work in supportive groupings, use the quotes/slogans from the grouping activity or some sentence starters to help them.

Plenary

  • Ask pupils to stick their slogans and quotes on the wall and share as a class.
  • Discuss how they make them feel about kindness.
  • They could take some home to share.

Ideas for extension

  • Pupils could use their slogans/quotes and come up with a persuasive poster or letter to encourage the class (or another class) to be kind to others.

Kindness Poem Activity

By

mind-moose-kindness-poem-activity

Click here to download PDF

Suitability
This ‘Kindness Poem’ activity can be used for Key Stage 2 pupils. It is most suited to Years 4-6 as it includes the use of abstract nouns, however, it can be easily adapted for younger pupils.

Overview

The activity asks pupils to create a poem about kindness using their senses. It asks them to think about how they can describe kindness (an abstract noun) using adjectives, adverbs and nouns (extending to using similes, metaphors and personification).

Introduction

  • Introduce the word kindness to pupils.
  • What do they think this might mean for themselves and for others?
  • Discuss with pupils when they have been kind to somebody or someone has been kind to them. What happened? How did this make them feel about being kind?

Main

  • Look at what an abstract noun is and your own definition of it.
  • E.g. An abstract noun represents something that can’t be be seen, heard, smelt, felt or tasted, for example truth, danger, freedom, happiness, rather than a concrete object.

Mind maps

  • Ask pupils to create a mind map about kindness separating it into what colour it might be and also into senses, e.g. what it might look like, smell like, taste like, feel like (as in touch), and what it might sound like.
  • Encourage pupils to add in adjectives and adverbs for each part of the mind map. E.g. Colour – yellow, pink, green etc… Sight – looks like butterflies, birds etc… Smell – rain, flowers in spring. Taste (this one can be tricky) – candyfloss, chocolate etc… Touch – wind etc… Sound – music etc…
  • Challenge pupils to come up with as many adjectives and adverbs as they can think of for each section of the mind map.
  • Invite pupils to share their ideas with a partner or in a small group and to add any additional ideas to their mind map.

Creating poems

  • Ask pupils to choose their favourite word from each section, highlight it and use a thesaurus to find different words to mean the same thing.
  • Challenge pupils to extend these into phrases adding in lots of description to each phrase, e.g. Kindness is the colour of sunshine yellow bursting through the clouds on a dark and dismal day….
  • Ask pupils, either working alone or in pairs, can come up with their poem for kindness using a format similar to below or a format of their own choosing

Kindness is the colour of…
It smells like…
It sounds like…
It feels like…
It looks like…
It tastes like….
When I am kind I feel…

Plenary:

  • Share the children’s poems as a whole class and make a kindness display including their work.

Ideas for extension:

  • Encourage children to use expanded noun phrases as well as similes, metaphors and personification in their poem.

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