Frederika Roberts and Elizabeth Wright share how and why they created the Character Toolkit Strength Cards.
Find a link below for a free download of The Character Toolkit Strength Cards themselves as a printable resource to help during the challenging Covid-19 pandemic.
Over the years, we have worked with thousands of children of all ages and their teachers. We know, from our work and the available research, what a positive impact it can have on children’s wellbeing when they know, understand and work with their character strengths.
We often use strength cards in our teenage workshops and teacher CPD / INSET sessions, and teachers have frequently asked us about cards they can use with younger children in school. Last year, therefore, we decided to create our own strength cards for younger children as a practical tool to complement our book, Character Toolkit for Teachers. We spoke to our wonderful editor at JKP and, gradually, a plan developed and our dream of creating a set of cards became reality.
We were delighted to receive the support of Claire Probert, her staff and pupils at Lancot Challenger Academy, where we ran workshops with the children and asked them to draw their interpretations of some of the character strengths. Year 1, Year 2 and Year 5 children, aged between four and ten, produced some fantastic drawings as inspiration for our brilliant cards illustrator, David O’Connell.
Free Resource for parents, teachers, carers, counsellors…anyone who works with or has children
The Character Toolkit Strength cards will be published on 18th June 2020, but with the global Covid-19 pandemic the world has changed dramatically over the past few weeks and children, their teachers, and their parents need all the support they can get right now.
For this reason, we are delighted that, in conjunction with the wonderful team at JKP, we are able to offer you, while the Covid-19 crisis goes on, a FREE DOWNLOADABLE VERSION of the Character Toolkit Strength Cards. You can download and print these at home and start using them straight away! You can also download the booklet which gives you all the information you need to understand not only why character strengths are such an important part of wellbeing and thriving, even under the most challenging of circumstances, but how to use the cards, with lots of suggestions to get you started.
The character strengths in the cards pack
The pack of cards contains 30 character strengths, which we have chosen as a focal point for children to learn to recognise and express all key facets of their character.
The first 10 strengths in the list are intended for use with the youngest children (age 3-5), based on research into the strengths most commonly expressed and understood by this age group. All 30 cards are suitable for use with older children, but of course you know your children best, so we leave it up to you to use whichever cards you feel are most appropriate.
- Curiosity
- Humour
- Excitement
- Love
- Kindness
- Imagination
- Teamwork
- Sensibility
- Persistence
- Gratitude
- Bravery
- Fairness
- Forgiveness
- Honesty
- Hope
- Optimism
- Humility
- Judgement
- Leadership
- Perspective
- Respect
- Adventurousness
- Friendliness
- Patience
- Helpfulness
- Self-reflection
- Confidence
- Community Spirit
- Focus
- Bouncebackability
You can download the free printable Character Toolkit Strength Cards and booklet below. Of course, we hope you will love the cards and will want to order them in their full glory to use as soon as they are published (18th June 2020).
You can order your set of cards upon publication on the JKP website with a 15% discount, using code 9956400028
Download the cards free here
Frederika Roberts is a former secondary teacher and a positive psychology, positive education and character education speaker and trainer. She is the founder of Educate to Flourish CIC, author of Recipe for Happiness and For Flourishing’s Sake and co-author of Character Toolkit for Teachers. She tweets @Frederika_R
Elizabeth Wright is a Paralympic medalist and a Character Education and Disability Awareness speaker and trainer. Elizabeth has a Master’s degree in Character Education and has spoken all over the UK and globally about character. She is co-author of Character Toolkit for Teachers. She tweets @esioul
Character Toolkit for Teachers, contains 109 practical character strength and wellbeing activities for teachers and parents to use.