The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues have compiled some fun activities to play and make with your children to help them reflect on some of the virtues included in the Framework for Character Education in Schools. We hope that these activities will provide a way of discussing virtues with your children in a way that relates to their lives, helping them to talk and think about how they feel as well as how they act in relation to moral situations and emotions.
These resources are grouped by the virtues themes and are mainly craft activities that would be great for use with younger children.
We would love to hear your comments on any resources you have used. Please do give us your feedback on our Twitter page, using the twitter handle @jubileecentre1. You could even post a photo of the end result, if you like.
Home Learning
Following the Prime Minister’s announcement during the COVID pandemic, that all schools were to close for the foreseeable future, many parents and guardians will find themselves in a challenging and unprecedented situation.
There are fantastic sources for academic support and ideas for educational activities, with many schools providing materials for their students. However, this extended time at home and in families will also give many of us an opportunity to reflect on what type of person we are, and want to be. There is an opportunity for all of us to emerge from this crisis as more resilient, compassionate and generous people.
The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues would love to support parents and carers to use this time to promote character development and reflection for young people. We have a range of exciting, freely available resources to support parents and carers to encourage the young people in their care to develop positive character virtues during this time.
We have created a calendar with 30 days of character building activities for primary school children . For older children, we have created this list of creative character-building activities, linked to virtues. All of these activities have been designed for children to complete at home, adhering to social distancing guidelines.
Empathy
This activity gives instructions on how to make simple finger puppets. Making finger puppets with children, and using them to act out familiar or new stories, is a great way to enable them to discuss feelings and develop empathy.
This is an activity designed for children aged 5-9. Children can make the die by themselves, or with an adult, and use the question ideas to write some questions on each face. When you are reading together, rolling the die and discussing the question on the face will allow you to explore the story, and the virtues in it, further. The die can be used to discuss the theme of honesty or any other virtues you choose.
The Courage Shield gives children an opportunity to think about what courage is and the ways in which courage can be shown.
The Ladder of Bravery helps children talk about the things they may be scared of and how, with support, they can identity steps to overcome those fears. Similarly to the compassion activities, parents/guardians can write for the children, or children can complete the writing themselves after discussion.
Compassion, Kindness and Gratitude
These resources are created for younger children. The Jar of Kindness helps children to reflect on kindness by giving them opportunities to think about how kindness has affected them and how others’ acts of kindness have made them feel.
Meanwhile the Gratitude Chain gives children a chance to thank those they feel gratitude towards. Parents/guardians can write the messages for younger children, or children can complete the writing task themselves after discussion.
To celebrate the release of The Grinch film, we have produced some fun activities to develop gratitude and kindness among children. There is a kind deeds bingo which encourages children to complete a range of kind deeds, a template for a thank you letter to someone who has been kind to them and an activity asking children to draw a picture of things they are grateful for. These would be great to use with children, ages 5-11.
You can find inspiration by watching The Grinch trailer here:
Of course, there are lots of other great Christmas films which could lead to discussions about virtue. You can download a shortlist of our favourites by selecting the icon below:
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