A few years ago I started a “Spread Love Challenge” in the hopes to help teach my children the positive impact they can make in the world along with valuable lessons such as the meaning of love, gratitude and community. My family has had such a wonderful experience with this challenge and this year we will be doing it again, but I am updating it just a tad and I am SO excited to share it with you!
In case you are unfamiliar with our Spread Love Challenge, it is 14 days where you focus on spreading love in your community through a simple act of kindness every day and reading books about spreading love and having a positive impact in your community. So simple and yet so impactful, especially when done with intention!
I have a free printable packet all prepared for you to make it as fun and easy as possible which includes: a list of 14 ideas for random acts of kindness that can easily modified to be as simple or as elaborate as you would like, a recommended book list for books that teach kids how to spread love and contribute to their community, printables that make the activities easier should you choose to use them and an advent calendar (that can be printed off on a giant poster!) to help you track and celebrate as you go!
Excited?! Me too! First I recommend grabbing the book list and reserving as many titles from the list as you want. I like to read a book or two about spreading love with my kiddos every day of the Spread Love Challenge. I lovingly curated this list with what we consider the best of titles for teaching kindness, empathy and community. There are seriously some of our favorite books on there. Definitely worth checking out!
Next, I would recommend printing of the advent calendar and coloring it. (With the exception of the pathway which you color as you go throughout the challenge.) We printed our’s off as an engineer print at a local printer and the dimensions are 36″ X 48″. It creates a giant poster that you can display in your home (we adhere it with painters tape so it’s “wall friendly”). You can also print off smaller copies such as 8″X10″ or 11″X14″ and do one as a family or have a separate copy for each child in your home to track on their own.
Lastly, print out the list of random acts of kindness ideas and you are good to go! I chose activity ideas that are simple yet impactful. I didn’t want you to feel overwhelmed with elaborate crafts or activities and I wanted them to be simple enough that older children to do them self-led/ on their own if they want. Also, many of them center around words (such as a phone call of appreciation or notes) because words are such powerful tools. Such an important message to help teach my children!
When you start your challenge simply do any planned act of kindness every day and read a book or two about love. I even included some resource pages for you (such as Heart Ambush printables and Small Heart Love Notes) to make the activities even simpler for you to perform. They are free to use with this challenge as you wish!
To celebrate each day and activity completed, color in one block of the pathway on the advent calendar to track your progress. Another idea is add some heart stickers to the poster around the houses to represent the love that you and your family shared that day. This is optional, but my kids love doing it so I had to share.
I kept the book list and the components of this challenge away from a “Valentines Day” specific focus so that it could be done anytime in the year. However, doing it as a Valentine’s Day celebration is my families favorite time of year to do it. We love to start on February 1st and end on Valentines day. It is a great way to focus on love for the month.
I am so excited to do this challenge again with my kids this year. Helping them to stay kind individuals and develop empathy is a task that I embrace and even enjoy. There are so many beautiful things about this world that we live and and our children have so much power in them to create positive change. I love to see their faces light up when they practice this power and see the beauty that it creates. I hope you join in with us for this challenge. Let’s spread the love!
“Spread Love Challenge” Printables free for personal use:
A couple of these activities involve making valentines or notes of appreciation and encouragement (depending on the time of year or what you want to accomplish). I have a couple ideas that I have used and posted here in the past that work perfectly with this challenge if you need some ideas. The tutorial for the string art heart that is pictured in this post above is right HERE and I have a tutorial for the heart valentines pictured below in this post HERE. They are super fast and easy and so much fun to make.
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Tara Bertic says
Hi there, I donwloaded the poster, but when I go to print it, it just prints regular size and not 36″x48″. Do you know what I am doing wrong?