Nurture Kind Habits

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Cultivate a Gratitude Garden

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Turn gratitude into a beautiful display!

By taking the time to notice and appreciate good things in your life, you'll teach children to cultivate gratitude all year round. Use our gratitude garden printable below, create your own gratitude tree, or dream up your own display!

What you’ll need

  • Our printable template for a Gratitude Garden sign, and for our flower petals.

  • A variety of beautiful paper. Magazines, reused wrapping paper, or newspaper print work, as well as construction and scrapbook paper.

  • Recycled container for your garden – a tin can is perfect, a cracker box with the top half cut off works well too.

  • Markers

  • Glue or tape

  • Buttons, fabric, pipe cleaners, or other embellishments

Instructions

  • Print our templates.

  • Decorate the gratitude fence and glue or tape it to your base.

  • Cut simple petal shapes out of your favorite decorative paper.

  • Cut stems in various lengths (6” to 12”) out of repurposed cereal or pasta boxes.

  • Reflect: what are you grateful for? Write one thing on each petal.

  • Place your garden somewhere nearby, along with any leftover petals and stems. Remember to add to it from time to time, perhaps after family dinner or during a weekend morning over coffee and cocoa.

Reflection

  •  As quickly as you can, list 20 things you are grateful for.

  • List one thing you are grateful for that indulges each of your senses.

  • List something you are grateful for in every season (or month).

  • Why is it so easy to forget the many things we are grateful for when we discover something new that we desperately want?

  • How can we remind ourselves to be satisfied with the good things already in our lives?

  • What if we woke up tomorrow and only had the things we expressed gratitude for today? What should we be sure to add to our gratitude garden?

Resources

Browse the books in Doing Good Together’s picture books to inspire gratitude for your next family favorite!

  • Thank You Letter by Jane Cabrera
    After getting into the spirit of writing thank you notes for her birthday gifts, Grace decided to keep going. Watch what happens as she shares her thank you notes all over town. For anyone who wonders what thankfulness in action looks like, this sweet story will be an inspiration.

  • Thank You, Omu! by Oge Mora
    This story is a bit like Stone Soup in reverse. Omu (pronounced Ah-moo) creates a stew so tasty, that her neighbors can’t help but ask for a bowl. Her gracious giving leaves Omu with an empty pot at dinner time. But don’t worry, her generosity hasn’t gone unnoticed! This beautiful story is full of opportunities to talk about giving, gratitude, and how we can show appreciation for those around us.Take it further

Take it further

Browse the projects in our Big-Hearted Families Tookit!

Disclaimer:  Doing Good Together™ is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

The recommendations we offer are based solely on our mission to empower parents to raise children who care and contribute.

4 Elements of a Kindness Practice

Get started with DGT’s big-hearted basics.

Our tools and resources are designed to help you launch a kindness practice with your family.

Not all at once.

Not in an overwhelming way.

The four strategies below will help launch your kindness practice in increments, one simple act, book, or conversation each day.

““A family kindness practice is not simply an occasional volunteer engagement. It’s a way of moving through your busy days with intention, empathy, and wonder.”
— arah Aadland, Big-Hearted Families™ Program Director

Make kindness a priority!

Take a look at your family’s schedule and find a way to build small acts of kindness into the activities you already enjoy.

Give it a try:

2. Read Widely Together

The stories you share offer a great opportunity for big conversations. Through literature, you can explore a range of social issues, emotional states, and personal challenges from your own home and in your own time!

Give it a try:

  • Print and use DGT’s conversation starters for any story.

  • Browse our topical book lists.

  • Read often. Bedtime stories, of course, but also over breakfast, in waiting rooms, and on lazy Saturday mornings. Keep reading long after they learn to read to themselves. In fact, read with your child until they demand you stop, and maybe just a little longer.

3 Reflect Together:

Sparking conversations on your kind acts, books, and experiences teaches kids how to ask big questions, how to make earnest observations, and how to walk in the shoes of another.

Give it a try:

4. Volunteer Together

We come to these last only because volunteer experiences are less frequent.

No matter how often you schedule volunteer events, they will make a huge impact on your children. Some of our member favorites include:

Give it a try:

Disclaimer:  Doing Good Together™ is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

The recommendations we offer are based solely on our mission to empower parents to raise children who care and contribute.

Adopt Everyday Habits

Add heart to your routines with our printable menu!

Our daily routines define our lives. After all, we are what we do day after day.

By adopting one or two simple, caring routines, you'll give your children a strong sense of themselves as helpers. In this way, big-hearted habits empower kids to become thoughtful, engaged citizens throughout their lives.

We’ve created a menu of big-hearted family routines, pairing our favorite habits with the cues that have worked best for members of the DGT Family.

“The less you isolate acts of kindness into their own once-in-a-while calendar slots, the more generosity simply becomes a way of life.”
— Sarah Aadland, Doing Good Together

Don’t feel daunted by the complete list below. You aren’t meant to tackle them all at once!

  • Choose one or two favorites.

  • Use them as inspiration to design your own big-hearted routine.

  • Add or change the routine as your child grows.

By adopting a few, well-timed habits, you may be surprised how easy it is to move from good intentions to positive actions.

Instructions

  • Download and print our Menu of Big-Hearted Habits..

  • Invite your family to browse through the ideas and discuss which ones might work best.

  • Choose one or two routines to adopt.

  • Decide on a reward you can enjoy together after you've reached a goal or milestone. For example, if you stick with your habit for two straight weeks, you may want to take your family out for ice cream or have a dance party together.

Read about it!

Inspire your whole family to live generously with excellent picture books and big-hearted conversation starters. Pick your favorites from our growing list and get started today!

Disclaimer:  Doing Good Together™ is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

The recommendations we offer are based solely on our mission to empower parents to raise children who care and contribute.

Create a Kindness Quilt Display

Celebrate good deads and grow empathy muscles!

Research confirms that accountability is a key way to foster new habits and reach difficult goals. By letting your family know that kindness and helping others is a priority, you’re setting high expectations for follow-through.

This project pairs perfectly with The Kindness Quilt by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. As you'll see in the book, taking time to focus on everyday acts of kindness makes us all strive to do more.

Create your own “kindness quilt” with DGT’s Kindness Quilt printable, or set up your own creative display of kindness.

Get creative! Your squares can become a quilt, a banner, a bulletin board, or a collage! Use them to inspire kids to notice the kindness they give and receive.

What you’ll need

  • Colored pencils, crayons, or pens

  • Scissors

  • Painter’s Tape

  • Colored paper and glue (optional)

Instructions

  • First, read the book The Kindness Quilt by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. Watch what happens when Mrs. Cooper challenges her students to share acts of kindness and depict them in drawings! Don't let the cute, simple design of this book fool you. Children will be excited to make their own display!

  • Choose large squares for younger kids or art enthusiasts or small squares for large groups and older kids.

  • Cut apart the squares.

  • Place squares and drawing supplies where your kids can easily grab them. 

  • Create space on your wall to display your quilt squares as you draw on them.

  • Choose a time of day to regularly spend a few minutes talking about kindness.

  • Try to answer the following questions:

·   How did you share kindness today?

·   How did your action make you feel?

·   How do you think it made others feel?

·   How did someone help you today?

  • If you’re feeling crafty, embellish your quilt squares. Like Minna in our story, gather scrap paper and glue to create backgrounds. Then tape them on your wall to create a quilt just like in the story.

Reflection Questions

  • After a few days of adding to your quilt, ask: Did you enjoy focusing on kindness? Should we continue adding to our quilt?

  • Do you find it easier to recognize (and be thankful for) the kindness others do for you when you know you'll be talking about kind acts later with your family?

  • Can we brainstorm a list of new kindness ideas you might want to try?

Resources

Take it Further

  • To keep a daily focus on kindness, print a stack of our Pithy Placemats, now in several new versions. They help bring big-hearted conversations to every family meal.

  • Commit to a monthly family act of kindness tailored to book lovers like you. Send books each month to a child in need of reading materials with our Feed Hungry Minds project.

Browse the projects in our Big-Hearted Families Tookit!

Disclaimer:  Doing Good Together™ is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

The recommendations we offer are based solely on our mission to empower parents to raise children who care and contribute.