Nurturing Kindness in Kids with Social Emotional Songs

I think it’s safe to assume kindness and empathy are values we all want to embody and instill in our children. At Bloom, this is certainly something we strongly value in our classrooms and in our work with clients and families. But how do we really teach kids what kindness is and how to do it? How do we teach empathy? 

If you look up the definition of empathy in the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, you’ll get something like this “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another”. That's a lot to ask of a 4 year old, much less a 2 year old. So why do we even bother? Studies show that the more empathy a child displays, the less likely they are to engage in bullying, online and in real life. Empathic children and adolescents are more likely to engage in positive social behaviors, like sharing and helping others. They’re also less likely to be antisocial and exhibit uncontrolled aggressive behaviors. 

As part of our Music Rocks! Curriculum, we use a song called “You Get What You Give” which teaches kids if you give a lot of kindness, love, and laughter you get those things back in return! You can listen to part of the song in this video!

Miss Amanda is wearing a purple shirt, playing her brown guitar against a blue background singing "You Get What You Give" from the BloomiVerse Music Rocks! Curriculum.

We wanted to share some our other favorite resources to help talk about these themes: 

• K-I-N-D by Stephanie Leavell is a beautiful and sweet song describing what it means to be kind to someone else. It’s a soothing song to listen to in the car or at home or even to work on identifying letters and learning to spell! 

  A lyric video of the song "K-I-N-D" by Stephanie Leavell with song lyrics and graphics

  
  

The Little Blue Truck

 by Alice Schertle 

This is a fun and engaging story about how “you get what you give in this world” and a great resource to teach kindness to kids!

"Little Blue Truck" book featuring a blue truck carrying farm animals in the back

Finally, another song we like to use at Bloom is to the tune of “10 Little Pumpkins” and goes like this: 

Kindness means gentle touches 

Kindness means gentle touches

Kindness means gentle touches 

We can all be kind! 

The best part is the words are adaptable! What does kindness mean? Loving words? Saying “thank you”? Taking turns? You decide! 

We hope these resources are helpful in helping you navigate teaching kindness and empathy with your kids. There are so many great resources out there to help build these skills, but honestly the best one is YOU! Our kids learn more from how we act than by what we say, so let’s have fun, be creative, and sing wonderful songs while being the best examples of kind and empathetic people we can be!