When someone has humility, it means that they have a humble or modest view of themselves. In other words, they don’t think they’re the center of the universe. However, being humble isn’t always easy. Activities that center around humility are valuable to include in your social-emotional lesson plans as they can help foster positive relationships. For this reason, we’ve rounded up a collection of 23 inspiring activities that are sure to help you teach humility!
1. Build a Humility Mind Map
Before teaching your students about the essence of humility, you can ask them what they think humility is. What does it mean to live with humility? What do humble people do? You can create a mind map on the classroom board with their answers.
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2. Self-Reflection on Humility
A famous quote about humility reads, “Humility is not denying your strengths, humility is being honest about your weaknesses.” Your students can do a self-reflection exercise on humility by journaling about their strengths, weaknesses, and humility.
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3. Practice Humble Responses
You can coach your students on responding to compliments with more humility. Instead of saying “Thank you” they can rather say, “Thanks, I couldn’t have done it without your help”. This change honors the fact that others assisted them along the way.
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4. Role-Play
Role-play can be integrated into your humility lesson plan in various ways. Your students can role-play characters with and without humility.
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5. Boastful or Humble?
Your students can read through different scenarios and determine whether an action is boastful or humble. You can think of your own scenarios to present or use the free examples from the resource below!
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6. Humble Caterpillar Craft
Caterpillars are often considered humble creatures because of the patience involved in becoming beautiful butterflies. Your students can make this cool humility craft by folding and trimming a strip of paper before finishing it off with a smiley face!
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7. Pride Object Lesson
This lesson demonstrates the negative consequences of too much pride (or too little humility). Your students can build a marshmallow man using toothpicks and heat him in the microwave. Initially, he will puff up and then eventually deflate into something ugly; similar to prideful behavior.
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8. Pride vs. Humility Object Lesson
Here’s an object lesson for comparing pride and humility. The air represents pride and the water represents humility. If you want to reduce pride, pour water into the cup to increase humility. This can demonstrate that pride and humility are opposites.
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9. Compare Pride vs. Humility
Draw a Venn diagram on your classroom board to assess whether your students have a clear understanding of pride and how it compares to humility. What makes them different and what makes them similar?
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10. Intellectual Humility Lesson
Give your students a lesson on intellectual humility. This humility type is the acknowledgment that you don’t know everything. Developing this type of humility can be especially important for your students who are constantly expanding their knowledge.
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11. Write a Story About Humility
Your students can practice their writing skills by drafting a story about humility. An example plot could follow a character’s development into a humble person. If your students cannot independently write a story, you can create one together.
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12. Analyze Artwork
Artwork can convey meaningful messages. Collect artwork to show your students. You can ask them whether they see a depiction of humility or pride. The above picture is a good display of humility as the man views a smaller shadow of himself.
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13. Practice Humility with Community Service
No one’s time is too valuable to not help out the community. Your students can show care for others with humility through different community service projects. One example is picking up litter at a local park.
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14. Practice Humility with Opinion Sharing
A humble person would understand that their opinion is not the end all be all. These task cards include questions for your students to express their opinion. Through listening to others’ opinions, your students can realize that others have valid opinions too.
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15. Team Sports
Team sports can be great for teaching your students humility. The focus is on the team, not the individual. Collaborative activities like these can remind your students that they’re not more important than anyone else.
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16. Bunny Bounce Game
Here’s a collaborative activity that requires less prep than team sports. Your students can form groups, and each student can hold onto a group towel. The goal is to bounce a stuffed bunny between group towels without letting it fall.
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17. Ego-Balloons
If your ego/pride becomes too inflated, it can be difficult to control (like balloons). Your students can try to move balloons between each other without letting them fall. The control required to pass balloons can be related to the control for living with humility.
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18. Study a Celebrity
Celebrities are known as being some of the least humble people because of their fame. However, there are still many celebrities who show humility despite their stardom. Your students can pick a celebrity to research and determine whether they are humble or not before presenting their findings to the class.
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19. Read Quotes on Humility
There are plenty of inspiring quotes on humility that you can share with your class. One of my favorites is, “Humility isn’t denying your strengths; it’s being honest about your weaknesses.”
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20. Coloring Pages
Include a coloring page or two in your lesson plans. They provide good brain breaks for your kids. You can print free humility-themed coloring pages from the link below!
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21. Humility Activity Set
Here’s a pre-made activity set that includes multiple activities about humility and other relevant character traits. This includes analyzing humility in different areas, writing about personal goals, discussion questions, and more!
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22. Read Singing Sisters: A Story of Humility
Your students can read this story about sisters who embrace friendship and humility. Ma’iingan is often praised for her great singing talent. Her younger sister wanted to sing too, which initially bothered Ma’iingan. She eventually learned to practice humility and share her love of singing.
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23. Watch A Video About Humility
You can watch this video about humility with your students to recap what they’ve learned. Using kid-friendly language, it discusses what humility means and what humble people do.
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