Acts of Kindness Monthly Calendar
Happy new year 2024! Each year many of us make new year’s resolutions and will fail fulfilling them within the first few weeks. This year I made the commitment to help our younger family members give back to their community. Planning should not overwhelm our family when considering their demanding schedules. To overcome this challenge, we convened family meetings with Brandon, Anna, and Maria.
Kindness Acts Calendar
We decided to focus on one act of kindness each month. Listed below is our proposed schedule of activities that might work for your family:
- January: It is cold outside and homeless shelters are filled with families. Donate a few hours at a soup kitchen or give a sack of groceries to our local food bank.
- February: Create 10 handmade valentines for a local senior center or senior nutritional lunch program. Give people who work hard in our community some chocolate candy.
- March: Distribute flowers to the neighbors to celebrate the start of spring.
- April: Make pretty Easter eggs with greetings and deliver to neighbors.
- May: Think of all the mothers we know and wish them a happy Mother’s Day.
- June: Make a lemonade stand and give away tee-shirts to cool off during the hot season.
- July: Clean up the streets from 4th of July celebrations.
- August: On the first day of school, say good morning to everyone. Tell them that we hope they are happy with their teacher and friends in their class.
- September: Be kind to our parents and do things that our parents love to do with us on Labor Day.
- October: Try not to scare people with our costumes.
- November: Collect donations for the food bank to buy turkeys.
- December: Give new or nearly new toys to the Toys for Tots program.
Activity Reflection
After completing all of these acts of kindness, our family should feel fulfilled, tired, and happy! Much success by sharing your acts of kindness with others.
Mary Ann Burke, Ed.D., Digital Education Expert, is a substitute distance learning teacher for Oak Grove School District in San Jose, California and the author of STUDENT-ENGAGED ASSESSMENT: Strategies to Empower All Learners (Rowman & Littlefield: 2020). Dr. Burke creates digital language arts and substitute teaching K – 12 activities for teachers and parents. She is the Cofounder of the Genparenting.com blog. Burke is the former Director II of Categorical & Special Projects for the Santa Clara County Office of Education that supports 31 school districts serving 272,321 students in Santa Clara County. She is also a previous Director – State & Federal Compliance for Oakland Unified School District, the former Director – Grantwriter for the Compton Unified School District, and was the initial VISTA Director for the Community Partnership Coalition in southern California. Much of her work focuses on creating innovative digital trainings and partnership programs for teachers and families to support students’ learning. These programs were featured as a best practice at a National Title I Conference, California’s Title I Conferences, AERA Conferences, an ASCD Conference, the NASSP Conference, and statewide educator conferences.