The Educators' Spin On It

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Kindness Elves Free Printables for Busy Parents

Need Kindness Elves Ideas? Here is a set of Kindness Elves Free Printables to inspire your family for a celebration of kindness and giving to others.

Kindness Elves in front of Christmas tree lit with lights sharing kindness elves letters for child

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Kindness Elves Free Printables

When I first saw the kindness elves tradition at the Imagination Tree, I just knew that we had found our new family tradition for the holiday season.

The tradition focuses on what we believe is important life lessons, loving others and being kind, and our family belief that it is our job as parents to model and encourage these character traits.

The kindness elves tradition is also a delightfully fun way to sneak a little writing and reading into our holiday as well! Here are the Educators’ Spin On It, we like to turn everyday activities into learning opportunities.

Kindness Elves reading a book

Our kindness elves will

  1. Arrive every morning in a new and sometimes surprising place.
  2. Bring with them a special note and a suggestion of a way to spread love and joy this holiday season.
    Print the Kindness Elves Free Printables set here.
    Read all the messages of kindness here.
  3. Encourage the use good manners, kind words, and grateful hearts.

Sample Message From The Kindness Elves Free Printables:

Say Nice Things

Words are so powerful.  Kind words can help make someone’s day brighter.  Can you help us find one nice thing to say to everyone you meet today.  If you need some ideas, look back at your kind word lists.  Write back and let us know how it went!

Love,

The Kindness Elves

Kindness elves that include free printable notes for christmas with your child

Download and Print The Kindness Elves Free Printables:

If you are in the mood for little kindness elves in your lives and would like to give this a try, we have tried to make it as easy for you as possible.

Here is a set of Free Downloadable Kindness Elves Letters.

Since I am terrible at doing something for an entire month, we are only going to do 12 days. You could do 5 if you wanted – NO PRESSURES. I wrote the messages out HERE in case you wanted to make your own cards too!

I’ve printed mine out on cardstock, but traditional printer paper would work as well. There are some blank cards for you to fill in too. I used the font Unkempt at picmonkey.com if you wanted to make more in a similar style.

We would love to hear about your adventures and see your pictures with your kindness elves.

Kindness Elves Free Printables

This set is addressed “Good Morning Dear Children,”
This set is addressed “Good Morning,”

Tell Me More About Your Families Kindness Elf!

A kindness elf or fairy is a made-up character that will visit our children for a couple of weeks. They are created to help children keep generous, loving hearts towards others this holiday season. They may be used in place of or in addition to the popular elf-on-the-shelf tradition.

The Kindness Elves or Fairies are spin of the “Elf on the Shelf” tradition that has been around for many years, but recently made popular with marketing. I have several friends who have done the “Elf on the Shelf” with their children and I enjoy seeing on social media their little antics. It is wonderful that they are making connections with their kids and interacting with them.

Christmas Traditions using Kindness Elves with free printables for busy parents

This tradition, however, just wasn’t for our family. My own 3 little ones make enough mischief on their own that I didn’t need to give them any more idea. We also don’t subscribe to the fact that someone is “watching” you to see if you are behaving, rather than children must choose. And, I wanted a cute elf.

Many parents and teachers have already merged the idea and have their Elf on the Shelf doing kind things like baking cookies for a neighbor. A friend of mine had another amazing suggestion for combining the two – and that is Twinkle (her kindness elf) would teach her Elf on the Shelf how to SPREAD KINDNESS AND LOVE.

I love how we as parents can create our own stories and traditions!

We’ve even created a Christmas Kindness Calendar to go with our Elves this December.

Random Acts of Christmas Kindness Calendar for Kids

Kindness Elves Free Printables Teacher Tips:

  • When Kindness Elves send notes and children read them and write back, this is authentic learning. The notes from the elves are great for getting beginning readers and reluctant readers motivated about reading and writing.
  • When answering questions about the “reality” of the elves, I always say, “The story says…” With this tradition, you get to make it up!
  • There are no wrong answers with this story – it is yours to make.
  • Allowing your children to name their Elves gives them ownership as well. Even if it is a silly name, resist the urge to change it to what you want.

You can use this helpful guide for Heartwarming Children’s Books About Kindness.

cute kindness elves on table in front of christmas tree lights sharing ideas for acts of kindness

Where to find a Kindness Elf of Fairy?

Finding Elves: Our Elves are kindness elves. In the spirit of Christmas, they sent us a pair so that we could share their adventures with you. I adore that they are handmade from a woman’s cooperative in Brazil and are of extremely high quality so that our elves will be able to visit us for many years to come.

I have seen others use sweater ski ornaments from Target (they take off the skis) or just add little felt hats to small dolls you already own. Remember, this is your family tradition – you get to decide what your elves look like.

My only suggestion would be, is to choose a higher quality, well made elf so that it will last for many years to come.

If you end up purchasing an inexpensive one, I recommend buying a second one to store for another year when they fall apart, because cheap stuff will look cute for a short while, but will most likely not last.

You can also order a pair of adorable elves from the Official Kindness Elves site:

This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

Kindness Elf Ideas with Printables

For more Holiday Craft and Learning Activity Ideas, don’t forget to check out

May you and your family have a delightful holiday season. We wish you peace, joy, and much happiness.

school children in santa hats working on christmas activities and crafts
Children reading christmas books in santa hats with Dad.
Christmas theme virtual field trip for kids with reindeer, holiday lights, christmas tree farms and more!

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Comments

  2. Thanks- for several years my daughter has been asking ‘when our elf is going to visit’ after listening to stories from her friends. But when I looked into the commercial elf on the shelf, i found him sort of creepy AND a lot of work for the parent. Last year, we were trying to incorporate more selfless Christmas traditions- not so much about the getting but more about the giving. When i saw the kindness elf idea i loved it too! We tried it for the first time last year (using some scandinavian gnome-like dolls) and it was great! I was about to type up nessages for this year and stumbled on your post! Thanks for saving me the work! As a side note, we used to live in Florida and my kids went to school with Kim’s. Happy holidays and thanks for the posts!

    • Hi Caryn! So glad you found these. Amanda put them together and they make it so easy to use with the kids as you focused on positive things during the holiday season. Hope all is going well with you and the kids!

  3. I was searching for something special to do with my grandchildren and came across your Acts of Kindness idea. Thank you for taking the time to share.
    I have purchased Gnomes, which the children will name and enjoy for the Christmas season. As grandparents we will have fun with this idea and time with our little ones.

  5. There are blank forms with this free printable that you could use to create customized ones for your classroom Mrs. Delorbe, such a fun idea too!

  6. I love this idea and plan to use it in my classroom. Any chance you could share an editable version so i could chance a few words like "classroom" instead of "playroom" and "board" instead of "fridge" and make some personal to our school. Thanks!

  9. So sorry you are having problems opening it, I didn't have any problems with it right now, but I can sent a PDF to your e-mail if you would like, just post your email address and I'll send it out ASAP

  10. Hi, love your post but I can't open the Google document. Is there anything wrong with the link?

  12. These are fabulous, Amanda! Thanks so much for making it easier for parents (and grandparents) to use Kindness Elves! I featured your post as a Free Printable of the Day at the Living Montessori Now Facebook page and on Pinterest. I also added your printables to my "Using Variations of Elf on the Shelf to Encourage Kindness" post at Bits of Positivity: http://bitsofpositivity.com/2013/12/04/using-variations-of-elf-on-the-shelf-to-encourage-kindness/

  13. Thanks Amandine! You know we love incorporating reading and writing in fun ways =) This was just the perfect tradition for us to put our Spin On It!

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