Imagine a world where hearts are educated as much as minds. This is the HeartFirst vision and we are working to create this every day with the HeartFirst Kids Network! We know how important emotional intelligence and virtues like empathy, compassion, and kindness are for humanity. We believe that these are skills that can be practiced and learned just like reading, math, and science.
We also recognize that social media isn’t going away and that children are hungry to participate in it. We designed HeartFirst Kids as a safe space for children to practice safe, kind, and responsible social media use while also learning important life skills such as emotional regulation, nonviolent communication, and stress resilience.
What will the network provide my child?
- A safe space to practice and engage in social media
- A community learning environment that builds mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and encourages virtue development.
- Discussion prompts that promote critical, creative, and divergent thinking.
- An opportunity to engage in self-expression in a safe space.
- A space to practice tolerance for individual differences and the unique expression of peers.
- Children must sign a kindness pledge to participate
- Courses that educate on internet safety, boundaries, etc:
- Privacy in the Digital Age
- Cyberbullying
- Kindness and Safety Online
- FOMO: The Fear of Missing Out
- Live and self-paced SEL courses including virtue development, mindfulness, yoga, anxiety management, and so much more!
- Profile pages where children can share inspiration, favorites, and more, but no identifying information such as last names, location, etc.
- Compliment wall to encourage children to build each other up.
- Gratitude group to cultivate thankfulness.
- Blog: Children can submit posts to share within the network.
- Hangouts: These are virtual spaces/groups where children can connect, learn and grow together, based on topics of interest: (Examples: Book Nook, Minecraft Kids, Poetry Place, Art Alley, Sports Lovers, etc.)
- Virtue development is embedded throughout the network. Children can earn gems and badges for exuding certain virtues such as kindness, compassion, responsibility, etc. These gems can be earned through taking courses as well as mature, kind, and responsible use of the network.
- Children can earn points to become leaders and be able to create their own groups and start discussions.
- Continuous monitoring from prescreened admins who are here to keep the network safe.
- Yoga and mindfulness challenges.
- Show and tell forums: options for kids to share talents, teach and learn from each other.
- Discussion prompts to inspire thought and communication.
- Guest speakers: these will be adult role models who will share a video or offer a live course.
- Kindness Lotteries and Empathy Games.
- Live and self-paced SEL courses including virtue development, mindfulness, yoga, anxiety management, and so much more!
- Profile pages where children can share inspiration, favorites, and more, but no identifying information such as last names, location, etc.
- Compliment wall to encourage children to build each other up.
- Gratitude group to cultivate thankfulness.
- Blog: Children can submit posts to share within the network.
- Hangouts: These are virtual spaces/groups where children can connect, learn and grow together, based on topics of interest: (Examples: Book Nook, Minecraft Kids, Poetry Place, Art Alley, Sports Lovers, etc.)
- Virtue development is embedded throughout the network. Children can earn gems and badges for exuding certain virtues such as kindness, compassion, responsibility, etc. These gems can be earned through taking courses as well as mature, kind, and responsible use of the network.
- Children can earn points to become leaders and be able to create their own groups and start discussions.
- Continuous monitoring from prescreened admins who are here to keep the network safe.
- Yoga and mindfulness challenges.
- Show and tell forums: options for kids to share talents, teach and learn from each other.
- Discussion prompts to inspire thought and communication.
- Guest speakers: these will be adult role models who will share a video talking to the kids or teaching them a skill.
- Empathy games.
- Kindness lotteries.