Encouraging Kindness with Gardening Activities and the Kindness Elves

My 3-year-old granddaughter, Zoey, and I have so much fun with the Kindness Elves! Anna from the Imagination Tree (the founder of the Kindness Elves) gave some new ways to use the Kindness Elves in her 25 spring acts of kindness ideas. Anna’s resources helped me easily place extra emphasis on kindness with our Montessori gardening activities.

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Materials Used for Gardening Activities with the Kindness Elves

• Kindness Elves (They come in a number of different options for skin, hair, and clothing color!)
• Gardening kindness messages from free acts of kindness suggestion cards for spring at the Imagination Tree
• The Reason for a Flower by Ruth Heller (Note: There’s a new book cover now. I still have the version from when my now-adult kids were little.)
• From Seed to Plant by Ruth Heller (Note: I still have the version of this book from when my now-adult kids were little, but the cover hasn’t changed.)
• Gardening materials (See my Montessori indoor- or small-space gardening with a DIY sensory table post at Living Montessori Now for gardening resources.)

Encouraging Kindness with Gardening Activities and the Kindness Elves

Montessori practical life activities are wonderful for teaching children to care for the environment, but I wanted to place an extra emphasis on kindness. So I used both the Kindness Elves with the spring kindness suggestions along with children’s gardening books. The Reason for a Flower is a good introduction to flowers, so that was a natural choice for planting flowers in our DIY sensory table.

See my post at Living Montessori Now with Montessori indoor- or small-space gardening with a DIY sensory table. There you can see the gardening activities Zoey, Christina (my daughter and Zoey’s aunt), and I did that were similar to filling a planter with bedding plants.

For some gardening activities with seeds, I used a Kindness Elf suggestion card along with the book From Seed to Plant.

See “Life Cycle of a Bean Plant and Seed Planting Activities” at Living Montessori Now to see our work with seeds.

Caring for plants naturally encourages a kind attitude toward the environment.

And flowers naturally encourage gifts of flowers. Zoey wanted to gather a bouquet for her mom, so she was able to combine one of her favorite scissor activities (cutting flowers) with preparing a special bouquet.

You’ll find more gardening-related kindness suggestions in the free acts of kindness suggestion cards for spring at the Imagination Tree. Check out these: “How about we put on a little show in the garden to make others smile!”, “How about we pull some weeds in the garden today?”, “Shall we host a garden tea party for someone special?”, “Let’s make some pretty wind chimes or plant markers to decorate outside!”, “Let’s make a beautiful flower craft and gift it to someone!”, and “Let’s hand out flowers to people to make them happy!”

More Spring Kindness Activities

Zoey loved our Easter egg kindness project. It was easy to prepare and very meaningful for her.

The Ultimate Guide to Kindness Elves

You can find links to all of my Kindness Elf posts in my Ultimate Guide to Kindness Elves post.




I’d love to hear about your kindness projects!

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