The Thoughtfulness Game

“So in everything, do unto others what you would have them do to you.” – Matthew 7:12

As we continue to work on character development with kids, we focus on thoughtfulness this week. Please hover over my character development tab to see the 52 traits we work on throughout the year. There are over 7 lessons for each attribute, which gives you 365 days of activities, crafts, lessons, word pictures, books and more. The Thoughtfulness Game is an idea I came up with to help my kids be thoughtful with their friends. My goal is to make this character development series very accessible. Therefore, some ideas, like this one, will be super simple and not very involved. There are other activities that do take a bit more effort. You can choose the level of involvement you want for you family.

Today we had a play date with some friends.  I made up a secret thoughtfulness game to play while they were playing together. Making this a secret game adds an element of excitement and buy-in to the process. When you call something a game, kids don’t realize what a valuable lesson they are learning in the process.

I said to my kids I was going to watch for areas they were being thoughtful to their friends.  I had them come up with examples of how they could be thoughtful and gave them a few of my own.  Some of the things we came up with included sharing toys, helping with tasks, saying nice words, giving them something, sharing food, etc.

I said that the emphasized that the game would be our secret. If I saw them being thoughtful ,I would say a color.  If I didn’t catch them, but they were trying to be thoughtful, they could say a color.  So, if I saw Abby trying to share a toy I would say, “Abby, did you see their black dog?”  It was a fun little game, and I think they liked that we had a secret code.  I had to do some whispering in their ear to remember the game, and we had a few hits and misses, but I think the concept was good. Play dates have so many teachable moments, and it’s a perfect time for lessons in thoughtfulness.