Kindness Practice
Leah Lundquist
Start a Kindness Book Club: Ideas for ...

Everything is better with friends and a party! 

How about friends and a party and an amazing book? As a parent, September feels like a fresh start, a new year. It’s full of opportunity as the school year gears up along with a new season of activities and sports. I’m going to suggest one more thing to start this year - a big-hearted book party club! 

Start a Kindness Book Club: Ideas for Elementary Age Kids
Kindness Practice
MiaLisa Millares
Kinetic Kindness: 6 Active Ways to Get Kids ...

Learn ways to include kindness lessons in educational settings and beyond! Through learning about kindness, children learn empathy and compassion and can begin viewing the world around them through the eyes of others as they appreciate diverse perspectives. By building kindness activities into regular educational practices, we prepare kids for life as an adult who cares and contributes to the world around them. If action speaks louder than words in early childhood, why not get their bodies, minds, and hearts involved in caring for their communities?

Kinetic Kindness: 6 Active Ways to Get Kids Moving — While Giving Back
Teach Kindness
MiaLisa Millares
Teaching Kindness in the Classroom: Why It ...

Learn ways to include kindness lessons in educational settings and beyond! Through learning about kindness, children learn empathy and compassion and can begin viewing the world around them through the eyes of others as they appreciate diverse perspectives. By building kindness activities into regular educational practices, we prepare kids for life as an adult who cares and contributes to the world around them. 

Teaching Kindness in the Classroom: Why It Matters and How to Do It
Holiday Traditions, Parent with Purpose, Teach Kindness
MiaLisa Millares
Loving Hearts, Loving Kindness: Exploring 4 ...

Valentine’s Day often stirs strong feelings, often over-celebrated with material gestures. Our guest contributor shares how her view of the holiday was shifted by a homemade card, revealing the day's deeper potential. Learn how teaching young children about varied forms of love can foster empathy and enrich lives.

Loving Hearts, Loving Kindness: Exploring 4 Lesser-Known Types of Love for Children and Families
Parent with Purpose
MiaLisa Millares
The Messy Middle: Helping Children Understand ...

We might apply the idea of a “messy middle” to much of life–switching careers, engaging in social change, even parenting/family life itself. Most of our lives happen in this space, when you stop to think about it–we haven’t yet “arrived” at the metaphorical place of organization and tranquility, but are constantly evolving our processes to be responsive to needs. How might we help our children understand the messy middle–its necessity, its tension, its gift–in a developmentally-appropriate way?

The Messy Middle: Helping Children Understand Process Over Product

Pre-K Tips

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Full Buckets, Happy Hearts, and a Kinder World

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Since it came out in 2006, McCloud's book Have You Filled a Bucket Today: A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids has become essential reading in schools and homes across the country.  I recently had the privilege of chatting with Carol McCloud and learning more about her bucket-filling adventures.

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On Mindfulness: Nine Tools for a More Grateful, Peaceful, and Connected Family Life

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Unless we adopt healthy, intentional habits in our everyday family life, our best efforts at mindfulness will wind up like so many other things on our check lists: multi-tasked into meaninglessness, plowed through quickly, and crossed off before our goal is reached.

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The Wisdom of Kindness: 10 Life Lessons Children Learn by Doing Good

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Helping others is reward enough. Yet an intentional family practice of kindness and volunteering teaches lessons that will last a lifetime.