Sending Kindness

What You Need:

• Sending Kindness Reflection Questions worksheet

What You Do:

1. Share with students that today they are going to spend time sending good wishes to themselves and to others. Tell them that doing this can help create a chain of kindness in the world.
2. Have students first place their hands on their hearts and take some deep breaths.
3. Instruct students to imagine that someone who cares about them a lot has just come into the classroom and given them a hug.
4. Ask, "What does it feel like when you imagine this person giving you a hug?" Some students may share that they feel happy, safe, or a warm glow in their hearts.
5. Explain that they have felt kindness inside of themselves, and now they will send kind thoughts to that person. Have students silently say to that person: "May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe. May you feel peace."
6. Now, have students imagine they are looking in the mirror. Have them say those same phrases to themselves: "May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be safe. May I feel peace." 
7.  Now instruct students to think of a fellow classmate and to send that classmate good wishes. Have them silently say: "I wish you to be happy. I wish you to be safe." etc.
8. Invite students to come up with some of their own kind wishes, especially if they know a classmate that needs extra help in some way. For example, "Jose, I wish you relaxation because I know your family moved over the weekend and it was really stressful."
9. Now have students open their arms wide and think of the world.  Tell them they may send kindness to any being they'd like—kids, animals, anything. For example, "I wish everybody who is hungry has food to eat."
10. Ask students to complete the Sending Kindness Reflection Questions worksheet.

Meena Srinivasan, MA, National Board Certified Teacher, is a leader in the fields of Mindful Awareness Practices (MAP) and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). She is the author of Teach, Breathe, Learn: Mindfulness In and Out of the Classroom (Parallax Press, 2014) and SEL Everyday: Integrating Social and Emotional Learning With Instruction in Secondary Classrooms (Norton, 2019).