Thank you so much for this! It’s amazing how my 5 year old daughter responded to this. She wanted me to keep asking her questions. She loved it! And then she had a meltdown about how “rude” (her word) she was to her friends at school today. We were able to talk it through and I don’t think that would of come up if it wasn’t for the jar of questions beforehand.

I would like to see some blank notes so we can fill in more of these questions you lovely people have come up with. Also, if anyone has a new set they would like to share?
Thank you….beautiful idea for parents of 6 girls 🙂

Thank you so much for this. My 9 year old is already clamming up and giving us tween attitude…..I’ve printed them and am ready to go … bring on dinner tonight. I know this is going to work!!!
We have a slightly different thing that we’ve been doing for years…especially great in the holidays. It’s called the “Bored Jar”. It has popsicle sticks in it, with all sorts of ideas to do on them. If you pull a stick, you have to do it.
Ideas range from: popcorn/movie afternoon, bake a cake with mum, trip to the library, collect as many bugs as possible from the garden, wash mum’s car, read your sister a story, go to the Museum, go for a train ride, hope on a bus and see where we end up, tidy your room etc etc.
xxxx

I don’t think the link to download is working. I have tried on two different computers…

love this!!!! thank you…. will be using it for sure 🙂

I thought of another question for the jar: If you could volunteer or fund raise for a “good cause” what would that cause be and how could you help?

Hello. For some reasons i can’t open d file containing d questions. Is it possible to email it to me? Highly appreciate it 🙂

“What was your high today?”
“What was your low?”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”

This has transformed our mealtimes. Today our 5 year old pulled “Who in your class seems sad?” It is his first week of kindergarten. He said there was one kid who seemed sad because the kid was left out, never playing with anyone. Our 8 year old said, “You could ask him to play! And you might earn a Panther Paw (school reward for going out of one’s way to help)!” Our kindergartener said, “Oh yeah!” When he came home I asked if he had asked the kid to play and he said yes. I asked what the kid said and he said, “We just started playing! Now I have a new friend! But I didn’t get a Panther Paw.” I said, “But you got a friend,” and he said, “Yeah!” We are burning through the questions – would love a second set.

OMG, this is terrific. Hubby and I have been raising 13 yo GD for a year. She’s from another planet so this is great way to connect. Thank you, thank you.

This is such a great idea! I help with a Mom’s group at my church and we are making these next month so each Mom has one for her home. I tried to print off the questions but got an error message. Are these still available to print?

I think this a wonderful idea, we have an 8 hour car trip this summer so going to be taking them with us in the car, I’m hoping it will help my 9 year old daughter open up to me, fingers crossed 🙂

I can’t print these. I’ve tried to but, I just get blank paper. 🙁

I would also include “What would you do” type scenarios to help teach good social skills and life skills.

I love this and once I pulled it together for my daughter (age 11) and we started “sharing” at dinner, she wanted to make a jar for each of her classmates. So we made a fun Mommy/Daughter day out of it, shopping for 20 jars, colorful bags and ribbon and then printed out 20 sets of questions, cut them out, folded them up and stuffed each jar. She then wrote a special message to each of her classmates and we tied it around the neck of each jar. We delivered them yesterday. Hope they all get as much enjoyment out of it as we have! Thank you!

Hi, I voluntary help to run young carers clubs to give the kids some enjoyable restbite, Tuesday is our 6 to 10yrs and can’t wait to have a session with them using the jar question,s. The next club for 10 to 15yrs is on Thursday that too should be good, can’t wait, thank you so much from the UK.

I can’t wait to share this idea with our Teenmoms – moms of teens! We need all the resources we can find. 🙂

thank you!!!, i loved it!!!! i’m the mom of 2 boys so imagine how badly i needed something like this!!!!! i hope it’s ok if i translate the questions into spanish???. =)

Printing now and looking forward to using these to help unlock my tired teens’ minds after long days at school. Thank you 🙂

Just what I need as we move away from technology a bit and towards each other more :)~

Love this ! We’ve fine ‘favourite part of the day for 2 years now and the boys have grown a little tired’

I can’t wait to start my jar ! Thank you !

q/ what have you learnt today
Q/ what did you find hard today
Q/ how did you help someone today
Q/ Did you ask a question today

Thank you for this! I’m looking forward to introducing this at the dinner table with my husband and children. 🙂

The link to the questions doesn’t seem to be working. Can someone re-link, or correct the URL? I want to see the questions! Thank you! What a wonderful idea!

yes i agree it’s a great idea and it will prepare the kids to be ope minded and more confident but i have a question regarding the age what about sister of 7 yrs and her brother 4 yrs and you know what you have at home Tom & Jerry hhhhhhh.

many thanks for the useful debat

Amazing and life-changing. Thank you so much for sharing this xoxoxo

Thank you! Thank you!

Thanks so much for sharing this. It is a beautiful way to engage our children.

We also have a happiness jar in our house. When something wonderful happens to one of us, we write it on a bright yellow piece of paper. On NYE we will read them all together and talk about the wonderful things that have been a part of our lives, and be thankful.

I totally love the concept and I am going to start today…I never seem to have a conversation with my sons aged 11 and 7

Love this! Tried this tonight with my 9 year old son and 6 year old daughter. They loved the questions (we did 6 as they didn’t want to stop) but what was so interesting was the very lengthy discussion that followed, where I learned more about the social intricacies of my kids’ lives than I’ve learned in the last 6 months. For my son in particular, I gained a whole new level of insight to his social world, what he respects and what troubles him. This definitely got them talking much more freely and thoughtfully. Thanks for the great idea.

I love this! I am a teacher and am sending it home as a Mother’s Day gift. Hopefully this circle will continue to widen.

What a beautiful idea!!! Used it this morning with my 10yr old. Her face was lite up because we were having a pure conversation. She didn’t want to get in the bus!!! (I asked her… If you could make a survival kit, what would you put in it and why? She wanted my answers also.)

I love this! Here are a few questions I’ll add to my jar…

What are 3 things you do that make you feel alive(give you a spark)?
Tell me something that made you laugh today.
What beauty did you recognize today?

Much gratitude for all you share!

I love this!! I will be using it in my weekly tween yoga classes and with my own kids at home 🙂 Thank you for sharing…

Love this so much. I always thought my most interesting part of counseling classes was learning how to ask the question correctly. I love hearing stories, and love this idea. Working with teenagers sometimes I just ask them to tell me a story about someone who they think is brave, or about a day they would relive if they could. Obviously with younger kids you could change it up some but I find this gets them talking.

Amazing Idea! Thanks! Perhaps those of us with smart phones could skip the paper and put it straight on our smart phones. I bet some smart person could make (or maybe already has made) an APP!

Thank you!! We are loving ‘The Key Jar’ and have shared it with family and friends. Our kids want to do the questions at breakfast as well as dinner. it is really beautiful so thank you.

wow – this IS inspiring. I am not a mom. But, I am an Aunt. And I vowed to be a positive influence in my nieces and nephews lives. We live far apart. This jar could help us bridge the distance gap when they visit and become “our thing” when they visit. I am an artist in training I like to say so I do try to engage creative play on visits but mainly the play part is important. I love finding out my nieces and nephews imaginations. One question I like could relate to making up a story – asking them to choose what animal they would be and where they’d live as that animal and what their first adventure as that animal would be.

Wow love it!!! Thanks 😉 gonna start up our own jar. Thank u xxxx

This is lovely! Instead of a jar, I think I’ll use Heritage Makers to design a set of personalized cards with our family picture on one side, and a key question on each card … easy to shuffle, portable, and can be used over and over. Thanks for the inspiration! 🙂

Thank you for this. I am a social worker and plan to adapt this a little to use with the children I work with to better understand their world!

Thank you this is wonderful and is the key to making the world a better place and better thinkers for the future. Cheers

This is brilliant!!! We have 3 boys aged 6, 4 and 1 and we really struggle keeping our fussy 4 yo at the table. This could be a great way to engage with him a bit more. We will definitely be trying this.

Both of my daughters are teachers and I LOVE the way you honor Erin and other teachers! It just makes my heart smile! I am definitely going to share this one!

I couldn’t get the pages to print. Is there a way to get this document emailed to me? Thank you!!

Thanks for sharing this great idea. I had a problem downloading the kit, though. Is there a way that you could email it to me? When I go to download it, it says that only the first page (the cover page) would download. 🙁 I am really hoping to take this kit on our camping trips this summer and use them at night before bed! 🙂 If you could help me get the pages, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks,
Kelly

I love this so much! I just recently wrote a post that has 52 questions to interview your kiddos because I was so tired of hearing “good” when I asked about my kids’ days! There’s so much they don’t tell us about their their lives and their day to day worlds because they don’t think to bring it up, and we don’t think to ask. This is such a great way to connect with your little loves! 🙂

Thank you for sharing this! Can you recommend a source for good questions to share with a spouse?

I started using it yesterday. I asked my kid “what do you most afraid of?” He said “monsters, do you realize that that’s why I always look under the blanket and over to you before I go to bed?” My goodness, I didn’t realize that … What question did you ask? What response did you get? Care to share with Moms For Emotional Intelligence group on facebook?

I am a Grandma of 7 and sometimes we have blank spots in our conversations. This is a great idea for Grandmas too! Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for this.
I am definitely going to try this with my 2 boys 🙂

Though it would be good to give credit to the original teacher – Tish’s teacher – who thought of the question jar.
Has she / he been told what a great impact their idea had? 🙂

I like their idea of the questions being written by the kids themselves in the original jar, reminds me of another idea where a teacher asked her students to write – “what I would like my teacher to know about me” notes. I am guessing that sometimes kids will write a question that they themselves would like to answer.

Found this link on a Facebook friend’s wall. LOVE IT!
I have printed two sets and will be bringing it to my grandchildren’s homes. 🙂 Thank you very much for making this possible. I can’t wait to share these with my grand kids and their parents. 🙂

What an inspired idea. It is a bit of a challenge for me to get past the fact that we need these physical prompts to encourage real conversation with our own children, whom we love the most…but if it works, then that is what counts!

I was thinking that an enhanced option, might be to leave a small space after each question where you could jot down the kids different answers, at different ages, and save them as a family keepsake as well…it is also a great learning to look back at things that were of paramount importance to you at one time, and realize that they weren’t such a big deal as time passes…
And its fun to read the answers from when they are little! lol

Thanks for sharing!
Sue

My question would be…..Oh wow I just thought of several. LOL
When was the last time you were proud of yourself, and why?

Thank you for the Key jar gift!! Since I am from Germany, I translated them all into German and will pass them on in a group of preschool teachers, mentioning the source of course! If anyone else is interested in the translated version, please contact me.

My husband and I used questions constantly in our courtship. We sent e-mails full of them. We asked each other on dates. It was such a big thing that we created a deck of question cards for each guest at our wedding as party favors. We’ve kind of gotten out of the habit but every once in awhile on a date or a long car drive, one of us will say, “Honey, let’s do a question.” And we both smile.

When I click on the link to print the questions, its showing that the site is not reachable at this time. I have tried it on chrome and IE and it still didnt work. Somebody help?

When you have used one question, do I put it back in a jar?

So great!
Is there anything you’d like to be acknowledged for today?
What are you grateful for today?
What was great about today?
What was hard about today?

I have recently changed my “How was school today” question into “Did one of your friends make you happy today?…Tell me about it.” And “Did one of your friends make you feel sad today?…Tell me about it.” I get much more information out of my little kindergartener this way. I like the jar idea! I will be trying this!

Excellent tips! Could we partner with you to integrate this list into our Povi app? I think it will be helpful for both our parent App and kid App to help with kid EQ development.

We do the Roses and Thorns, however, I think this is going to be so much fun! Thank you for posting this and the questions! Although we think up questions to ask, they are not well received. I think if they come from this magical jar, they will be received better!

Thank you! I usually fall back on “most interesting thing today” or something general — and get typical pathetic answers. These more specific questions will be great! Since I’m non-crafty, I’m thinking about throwing last night’s Prego jar in the dishwasher.

having lunch with granddaughter 14y/o and her mother,the 14y/o stated,what kind of person was my mom when she was my age?”I don’t know my mom”.she had been in her life for 14yrs yet she never shared her life with her daughter.they are struggling today,I feel its because they don’t share their thoughts.Alyssa only hears what she’s doing wrong.they need help.

Thanks so much for these! This is a beautiful opportunity to bond with family! I’m a Dyslexia teacher and use something similar with my students. They think it’s awesome! Some of my favorites that you might like revolve around cure virtues.
Ex:
How did you use integrity today?
How were you honest today?
Did you show compassion to someone today? How?
Tell me 3 ways you used self-discipline today.
Etc.

freat idea! I am going to make these jars for my daughter and daughter-in-law for Mother’s Day! Thanks so much.

I am a teacher and I LOVE this idea for my classroom.

Q: If you could tell your neighbor (person sitting closest to you) one helpful thing for their day, what would it be?

Q: Tell me something you wish I knew the day we met.

Q: If today was our last day in middle school, what would you say was the biggest lesson you learned?

Q: If you were going to offer advice to someone on how to be a great friend, what would your advice be and why?

this would be fabulous to use in pen pal style to keep in touch with overseas military cousins!!!

I love to ask my children questions at the end of the day, right before bed. That’s when they seem the most open. I usually ask, “what is your most favorite thing that happened today?” and “what was your least favorite thing that happened today?”

Great idea! I think I will put these in a book as well as the jar and make a note of what respones are given by my daughters. Something to look back on when they are older.

What would you like your mom to pass on to you?

Love this ❤️ thank u so much for sharing !!

Love the idea!
Will try that with my kids!!

Glennon – If I knew how, I would post a picture of the jar that I re-purposed as our Key Jar. Judging from your attitude toward ribbon, I really think you’d get a kick out of the sad, sad “Marble Jar” I created a few years ago to reward my son for good behavior. Slapping the Woody and Buzz Lightyear stickers on it was easy, but the piece de resistance was the embarrassing attempt at drawing a bicycle (the reward for filling the jar with good-behavior marbles). He was 3 when I made it and I’m pretty sure he could have drawn a better bicycle. Soooo….all this to say Thank You….not only for the brilliant post that I started using with my kids even before printing out the questions; but also for making it EASY, with no craftiness required!! Of all the wonderful things about my tiny little book club, one of the best has been discovering you and learning that someone else thinks like I do! Thank you!

Loved this idea! Love it to send home with my 3rd graders, love it to send to my daughter to use with her 5 an 7 year olds, and I REALLY love it to use with my grown kids, when they come over!!!! Fantastic idea and beautifully crafted, for those of us who are “ribbon-challenged”!!!!

I have downloaded this twice now and it only will give me the title page, says there is an error in the document 🙁

Absolutely love this idea. I’ve started doing Birthday Questions this year, so this is another wonderful project to add to our ongoing family traditions.

Even with two little chatterboxes like I have it’s not hard to run out of conversation after a while, especially when your brain is mush after the constant juggle of kids-work-chores-repeat. Thanks for a brilliant solution.

One question I would add: ‘What superpower did you use today?’

Love this! I have one daughter who wants to tell us everything about her day and another daughter who we have to ask many questions to get anything out of her. This should help give some fun conversation starters that keep everyone engaged. I might use this with my preschool class also.
“What do you wish you had more time for?”
“What is the most important thing you could learn at school and why?”
“If you were a fly buzzing around your classroom what would you see or hear”
“If you played an instrument what would it be and why?”

Favorite all time question is……..

What do you think the key to understanding/knowing you – that most people miss?

I just finished reading your book for the second time in 3 months. Your words carried me through a marriage separation and into the healing of my family. My own Sister gifted me your book when I was completely broken. I cried the ugly cry the first time through reading of your sisters divorce. I was able to take so much more in the second time because I think the first read was about surviving for me. The second time through was about healing. Thank you for writing! You have forever helped me!

if you could “freaky friday”(switch places) with one person for one day, who would you switch with?

I can’t wait to try this with my two children ages 9&12! I only wish I had known about it when raising my oldest daughter who was adopted at 12 and is now 24 years old. Thanks so much for sharing!

This sounds like a truly amazing idea & gift that could just reconnect my family!! I feel as a family we are so disconnected & very unfamiliar with what each other wants or needs to feel loved ❤️ Thank you for sharing your creation & l am going to try the Key Jar with my two young children, thank you thank you xx

Love love love. Will add it or maybe it will replace our rose & thorn questions at the dinner table. Thank you!

I can’t wait to try this. I love dinner time with my kids and this will be great to do with all 7 of them

Thank you, thank you, thank you SO much for this!

If you could be any animal, what would you be and why?

If you were a spice, what spice would you be?

Our church hosts international students that come from all over the world to work and play in Myrtle Beach,SC. We provide a safe place to meet, play, rest and chat with other students and families through Skype. This concept of the key jar is an ingenious way to conversate with them. Although there is a language barrier…everyone can express in what little English they know their feelings of the heart. Thank you so much for the ideas.

Thanks a million…these will also be good for our partners~ My question to add would be “if you could do anything to make someone else’s day amazing, what would it be?

Planning to try this with my grandkids. I’ve been trying to think of questions I could ask on the phone that would get more of a response than “good” and “fine” and I could feel more a part of their lives since they live so far away.
And how about questions between husbands and wives that would get more than a “I don’t know” or “maybe”?

This reminds me of the “Ungame” series, which would be a good source for additional questions. Also check out Gregory Stock’s book, “The Kid’s Book of Questions” with tons of thought-provoking, conversation-starter questions.

Thank you!!!! I just printed this out and am putting it together now. Who encourages you? Who/what motivates you to do a better job tomorrow than you did today?

Seriously, THANK YOU for sharing this idea and the pdf so that I can also accomplish this with my son. A blessing!

So lovely!
“What happened today that made you the happiest?”

Love this and love your website.
Thanks so much. I cannot wait to try this with my family.
Adina

Glennon,
I just love this! I can’t tell you the success I have had at work with this concept! About a month ago I made conversation boxes to use with my patients. I work on an eating disorder unit and meal times are probably one of the hardest times of the day for the patients and sometimes conversations are hard. So, I made 4 boxes for our unit to use! It has been great and has helped me further the relationship I have with the patients! Can’t wait to add some of the questions from your jar kit to the boxes at work!!!!! So happy this was passed along!
Thank you!

Thank you such a beautiful idea. I so love it that I have shared it so other parents can have this special gift.

Such a simple but great idea.
My questions to add would be “what new thing did you learn today” and “what’s your earliest memory”

Glennon,

You make the world a better place. I love this idea and you’re right. We all want to be known and understood. What a wonderful lesson for children. Love this.

OH MY GOODNESS!! OH MY GOODNESS!! OH MY GOODNESS!!!!!!!!!!
We busted out the Key Jar for the first time last night. Sitting around the table were: Grandpa, Grandma, 8 y.o. daughter, 10 y.o. son and me (Mom.) Everyone took turns answering. Grandpa and Mom laughed about how similar our answers were and why. Grandma re-thought and changed her answer about three times. Everyone knew Daughter’s answer the second the question was read, because the girl is an open book. Son…Son brought me to tears with his answer. Son was EXTREMELY creative with his answer. Son spoke more words to me last night as a result of the Key Jar question than I think he’s spoken to me in the last six months combined. Son sat on my lap!!!!!!! He just did it. Son smiled and kissed me and said, “Good night Mama, I love you so much,” when I went to tuck him in. It really was a key. Miraculously, it unlocked something in his brain/heart. And, the fact that everyone was poised to just listen, I think, was a huge factor in its success.
So, Thank you again Momastery. Thank you.