Kindness Worksheets: Printable Activities to Help Kids Build Empathy and Compassion

Kindness is being caring, helpful, and gentle with others. For kids, this means noticing when a classmate needs help or doing things that make a sad friend feel better.

Printable kindness worksheets give children an easy way to practice these skills. Through interactive activities and reflection exercises, they can learn empathy, compassion, and thoughtful ways to support others.

Why Kindness Matters

Kindness isn’t just about being polite. It’s a skill that shapes how your child understands the world, builds friendships, and handles challenges. When you teach kindness at home, you give your child tools that support their emotional and social growth for years.

Regular, intentional acts of kindness can meaningfully strengthen kids’ social relationships. A study found that kids who performed acts of kindness not experienced improved well-being, but also became more accepted by their peers. Being accepted is associated with better academic and social outcomes [*].

Kindness can also help improve physical health. A study looked at whether volunteering can improve teenagers’ health. Researchers discovered that teens who volunteered showed health improvements such as lower inflammation, cholesterol, and body mass index [*].

These findings suggest that acting kindly and helping others doesn’t just benefit those around us. It is also beneficial for our kids’ emotional, social and physical well-being.

How Our Kindness Worksheets Help

Our printable kindness worksheets help kids by turning the idea of being kind into concrete, practicable actions. These activities promote self-awareness by prompting kids to think about their own actions and how they affect others.

Children are encouraged to try new behaviors and practice them so they can gradually build positive social habits. Over time, these small, consistent actions help kindness, compassion, and good manners become natural parts of their daily interactions.

Each activity is simple, self-contained, easy to follow, and takes just a short time to complete. Parents, teachers, and therapists can choose worksheets that match the day’s schedule or the child’s specific needs. The printable format allows worksheets to be reused or shared with different children.

Printable Kindness Worksheets

These kindness printable worksheets make it easy and fun for kids to explore kindness and start thinking about how their actions affect others.

Kindness Worksheets

This worksheet set consists of two complementary worksheets: Kindness In Action and Practicing Kindness.

Kindness In Action helps children explore their understanding of kindness by having them identify which actions are kind and think about ways they could respond kindly in different situations.

Practicing Kindness helps kids track acts of kindness that they do weekly. They are also encouraged to list kind thoughts toward their loved ones and reflect on how being kind made them feel.

Compassion Worksheets

This 2-page worksheet set, Compassion in Action and Practicing Compassion, is designed to help kids show compassion to others and to themselves.

Compassion in Action allows kids to check which self-compassion habits they do, and which ones they would like to practice on others. It also prompts them to think about how others’ compassion affects them and how to recognize when someone else might need compassion.

Practicing Compassion asks kids to identify what actions show compassion from a list. It also includes scenario-based questions that encourage kids to think about how they can practice this skill.

Caring Worksheets

Caring is a big part of kindness. When kids care about someone’s feelings, it becomes easier for them to help, share, or comfort others.

Caring worksheets help kids notice how others feel and think about ways to support them. The 2-page set includes Being a Caring Person and Caring in Action worksheets.
Through these worksheets, kids learn what caring looks like, reflect on how caring they already are, and challenge themselves to try new caring actions.

Good Manners Worksheets

Good manners make kindness easier because they teach kids how to treat others with respect. It reminds them to be considerate, like sharing, saying thank you, or using kind words.

Good manners worksheets support kindness by teaching kids to use polite words and thoughtful actions. The two worksheets, Good Manners and Practicing Good Manners, help them learn how to behave respectfully in different situations and places.

BONUS: Kindness Handout and Posters

These handouts and posters make it easy for kids to remember simple ways to be kind.

These can be hung on a wall to serve as a prompt that encourages them to choose kinder responses, especially in moments when they’re frustrated or unsure what to do. They also give teachers and parents an easy way to start conversations about kindness and reinforce positive behaviors.

All About Kindness

This handout works as a simple go-to guide for kindness. It highlights what kindness means, why it matters, and practical ways kids can be kind to themselves and to others.

It pairs well with the other kindness worksheets. The poster explains kindness in simple, memorable terms, while the worksheets turn those concepts into concrete activities and scenarios for kids to try.

Choose Kindness Poster

The Choose Kindness poster serves as an everyday reminder for kids to lead with kindness. When they see it regularly, kindness starts to feel natural. Visual cues like this set the tone for a space where respect, empathy, and care are expected.

Check out this similar Choose Kindness poster that brings the same message in a different design.

THINK Before You Speak Poster

Thinking before speaking helps kids slow down, choose their words carefully, and avoid saying something hurtful in the moment. When kids pause before talking, they create space to choose kindness.

Seeing the poster in a classroom, therapy room, or at home cues kids to stop, breathe, and think instead of reacting on impulse.

Loving-Kindness Practice

The Loving-Kindness Practice handout teaches kids how to send kind thoughts to themselves and others. It helps calm anxiety, frustration, and self-criticism. Kids learn to soothe themselves and send kind thoughts to others, even difficult people.

Kids learn that kindness is not just something you do. It’s also something you practice through thoughts and intentions.

Start Teaching Kindness Today

Teaching kindness doesn’t require long lessons or complicated activities. With the right tools such as kindness printable worksheets, kids can practice empathy, compassion, and thoughtful behavior in just a few minutes a day.

Our printable kindness worksheets, posters, and handouts give you simple, ready-to-use resources that fit naturally into home routines, classroom moments, or therapy sessions.

If you want to build even more social-emotional skills, try exploring our full Character Education Worksheets collection. It expands beyond kindness and covers important traits like respect, honesty, responsibility, and empathy.

References:

• Layous, Kristin & Nelson-Coffey, S. & Oberle, Eva & Schonert-Reichl, Kimberly & Lyubomirsky, Sonja. (2012). Kindness Counts: Prompting Prosocial Behavior in Preadolescents Boosts Peer Acceptance and Well-Being. PloS one. 7. e51380. 10.1371/journal.pone.0051380.
• Schreier HMC, Schonert-Reichl KA, Chen E. Effect of Volunteering on Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Disease in Adolescents: A Randomized Controlled Trial. JAMA Pediatr. 2013;167(4):327–332. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.1100