kind acts
We're always looking for fun and easy ways to encourage kindness in our homes, and we're sharing our ideas and resources with you!
1. Kindness Bingo. Create your own bingo card filled with simple kind acts your family can do for one another with this free bingo card generator. The first to reach a bingo on their card through kind acts get a prize - maybe it's choosing dinner that night, an extra cookie for dessert, or whatever else motivates your family.
2. Add kindness to the chore chart. My friend incorporates a required kind act on her children's weekly chore chart. Her children have the flexibility to decide what they are going to do, but they are responsible for looking for an opportunity and responding. They talk about it over dinner at the end of the week, with my friend helping the younger children unpack how they kind act made them feel, how their sibling felt, and what other ideas they might have for the next week.
3. Gratitude lists during prayer. As my family sits down to dinner, we've each started listing three things we are grateful for before one of us prayers over the meal. It is a great way to reset our attitude if the day has been frustrating and helps us remember what is going right with our day and week. We've found this to be a simple way to encourage ourselves and one another. It would be easy to turn this into a list of things we are grateful about each other some nights to keep it fresh and to keep us thinking of new things.
If you are looking for additional kindness resources, sign up for our email list. We send out a monthly newsletter filled with resources and freebies.
You can follow us on Instagram as The Ruth Experience for additional encouragement, ideas, and camaraderie.
Finally—have you checked out our books, The One Year Daily Acts of Kindness Devotional and 100 Days of Kindness? They tell the story of how our families embarked on a one-year journey of kindness, and include our successes, failures, and the encouragement you need as a family to incorporate kindness into your own life. If you already have one of our books and love them, we'd so appreciate it if you leave a review on Amazon. God redeemed it all in the most incredible ways.
We would love to walk alongside you in encouragement, inspiration and community.
- Julie, Kendra, and Kristin
It's our 6th year of Advent Acts of Kindness: Six years of doing one kind act each day from December 1-25. Six years of trying to change our children's hearts from focusing on "me, me, me"--only to realize that we ourselves are just as much in need of a heart change. All too often, we see hard things in the world and we feel paralyzed, like the problem is simply too big or that our small efforts won’t amount to anything. But as a mom, I want to show my kids that that’s not true, that kindness matters and that we can feel empowered to do something or to help others.
This Christmas season, that's my prayer for you, too--that you feel empowered and loved by a God who sees and knows you, and who wants to make his love and kindness known to the world, too--through you.
We've written two kindness devotionals, The One Year Daily Acts of Kindness and 100 Days of Kindness. They tell the story of how our families embarked on a one-year journey of kindness, and include our successes, failures, and the encouragement you need as a family to incorporate kindness into your own life.
Kristin, Julie, and Kendra
Each year has been a new adventure, but this year, we're trying something new.
We're creating a 25 Days of Kindness group in Facebook. Why should you join?
Because we'll be sharing ideas every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday throughout December, hosting Facebook lives and offering giveaways!
Click here to request to join the group.
We'll also occasionally post on our social media platforms Facebook or Instagram.
Looking for ideas? Here's are some of the things we've done over the years, complete with handy photos and links: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018.
Are you looking for more resources? Have you checked out our books?
Our newest book, One Good Word a Day, offers simple but deeply spiritual meditations that will help readers linger on one word each day so they can identify and reflect on how Jesus as the Word influences their daily lives.
Looking for encouragement in your friendships? Our adult friendship devotional, The One Year Daily Acts of Friendship, includes a daily scripture, story, and friendship prompt. It's encouraging and slightly challenging (in a good way!) in helping you find, keep, and love your friends.
Our devotional for tweens is a great complement to our devotional for women! 100 Daily Acts of Friendship for Girls is written specifically for girls ages 8-12 as they navigate friendships in upper elementary and middle school. With a scripture, short story, reflection questions and 50 fun activities to do with you or friends, it's a wonderful way to encourage your daughter, niece, granddaughter, God daughter and her friends to build healthy friendships from an early age.
We would love to walk alongside you in encouragement, inspiration, and community. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram as The Ruth Experience or sign up for our monthly newsletter (no spam, ever), here.
If you already have one of our books and love them, we'd so appreciate it if you leave a review on Amazon.
We're in this together,
Kristin, Julie, and Kendra
I was scrolling through my Facebook feed the other day when a headline along the side caught my eye: "Does growing up in a religious family make you MEAN? Christian and Muslim children found to be less altruistic than the offspring of atheists." Immediately, my heart sank. Less altruistic? More likely to deal out harsh punishments for minor infractions? That was the message I got as I read the study detailed in the news story. It was disheartening, to say the least.
And I wondered: As a mom, how do I teach my children a better way? How do regular people like you and I show our kids that kindness matters?
A few years ago, Julie, Kendra and I met with those same questions on our hearts. At the time, we all had young children, and were trying to figure out how to balance the giving and getting parts of Christmas. How could we refocus on others during the Christmas season, rather than focusing on an ever-expanding Christmas List for Santa?
And I wondered: As a mom, how do I teach my children a better way? How do regular people like you and I show our kids that kindness matters? A few years ago, Julie, Kendra and I met with those same questions on our hearts. At the time, we all had young children, and were trying to figure out how to balance the giving and getting parts of Christmas. How could we refocus on others during the Christmas season, rather than focusing on an ever-expanding Christmas List for Santa?
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