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5 Fun Ways to Raise Kinder Kids
- EI Editor Posted On Mar 2, 2021 | Learning Through Play
If the past year has shown us anything, it’s the need for more human kindness, compassion, and love. While you (and we, and hopefully everyone else) work on ways to become more tolerant and understanding in your own life, teaching your kids to be kind will help ensure that the next generation is a happier, more accepting place.Fortunately, kids are naturally kind and empathetic and with a bit of encouragement, you can make kindness a priority value in your home. And raising kinder kids doesn’t just benefit the friends and family around your children. Kinder kids have been proven to gravitate toward kinder friends, be less likely to break rules, get better grades and test scores, and even to be higher earners as adults. Sounds good, right?To support you in your crusade for kindness, EI’s Experts in Play have compiled five fun ways to encourage kindness at home, including:1. Modeling KindnessDo as I say, not as I do just doesn’t work when it comes to kindness. Watch your words and actions (and social media posts and comments!) to make sure you’re consistently demonstrating kindness in your own life.
2. Praising Acts of KindnessMake a point of commenting out loud when your kids, family members, friends, and even strangers do something nice for others, from sharing a toy to holding the door at the donut shop.3. Doing Daily Acts of KindnessCommit to doing something kind for someone else every single day and share the act – and how it made you feel! – with your family. Encourage your family to do the same with the simple acts of kindness on our free, downloadable 31 Days of Kindness calendar.
4. Asking About KindnessInstead of asking your kids how they did on a test or whether their team won the game, ask what they did that day that was kind. The more you ask, the more your kids will look for opportunities to do something kind so that they have something to share with you.5. Incorporating KindnessThe Design & Drill® Bolt Buddies™ First Responders sets are the perfect way to roll the concepts of sharing, caring, and kindness into your kids’ everyday play. Each Bolt Buddy has a job to do – and they always do it with kindness! From the Bolt Buddies Helicopter, swooping in for the perfect play rescue, the Police Motorcycle, zooming up to save the day, and the Fire Truck, ready to put out fires and rescue kittens in trees, these community helpers do their jobs with kindness and compassion.
Teach Your Kids to Be Earth Buddies
Did you know? The average American produces about 1,700 pounds of garbage every year, which means your personal annual trash pile weighs about the same as two large grizzly bears! Multiply that by a family of four and that’s a whole lot of trash filling our landfills, because although 75% of our trash can be recycled, only about a third is actually being recycled. In fact, more than 2.5 million tons of recyclable paper and paperboard waste end up in landfills every year, with packaging accounting for roughly a quarter of that total. More than 30 million tons of food waste also ends up rotting in the trash each year. Yup, our gross, grizzly-bear-sized trash piles are maxing out our landfills and polluting our environment. Luckily, there’s still hope – and our kids can help!
4 Family-Friendly Ways to Be Better Earth Buddies:
1. Pay attention to what you’re putting on your plate. Serve only what will be eaten, save the rest for another meal, and compost any uneaten food instead of throwing it in the trash. Kids can get hands-on composting experience with the Nancy B.'s Science Club® Garbage to Gardens Composting Kit, the only transparent composting kit designed just for them.
2. Become a conscious consumer. This means bringing your own bags to the grocery store (your kids can be responsible for remembering to bring them!) and a refillable coffee cup to Starbucks (when that’s allowed again), using a metal straw instead of plastic, and purchasing unpackaged items.
3. Research your city’s recyclable materials list and be sure to toss those items in the recycling bin, empty, rinsed, and dry. Our free, downloadable worksheet is a fun way for kids to learn about the different types of recyclables (while building fine motor and critical thinking skills, too).
4. Practice through play, like with the Design & Drill® Bolt Buddies™ Pick-It-Up Truck. Kids use a real, working, power drill to construct their own recycling truck, then play out their own community helper pretend play scenarios with the included sanitation engineer and his kitty cat co-pilot. Plus, all Design & Drill Bolt Buddies packaging does double duty as a playset, saving space in the landfill.
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