Giving Thursday #3--Color-a-Smile

This Thursday we continued the experiment with Big Hearted Families and colored pictures for a great organization, Color-a-smile.  It's such an easy project to do (most kids love to color) and can have a great impact.  If you're a parent with kids who love to color, I highly recommend looking into sharing some of your kids' artwork with those who need a bit of cheer.

During our activity, I made an effort again to encourage reflection.  To help kickstart this reflection, I like to start with a short video whenever possible.  This week, since one of the organizations that Color-a-Smile donates the drawings to is Meals and Wheels, and since we have a personal connection to MOW having volunteered for them a few years ago (a fond memory that Tyler talks about often), we watched a video about hunger among US seniors.  When Ty saw that Texas was one of the top 10 states in terms of the number of hugry seniors he gasped loudly. 

As they colored, we talked about how it feels when we're hungry and we tried to imagine what it would feel like if you were hungry and didn't know where your next meal would come from.  We also talked about how when you're hungry you might not be able to give your unique gifts to others (the key understanding that I mentioned was my goal for this effort last time).  Megan was much more involved in this conversation (and the activity) than the last two and I'm guessing our conversation will pop up again sometime when I least expect it.  Finally, we talked about how this activty may "fill someone's bucket," tying in a favorite new book, Have You Filled a Bucket Today.

A good time was had by all and I'm looking forward to seeing how and when our conversation may pop up again.

Oh, and as a special treat...here's a video that Tyler insisted we create when we were talking last week about needing a theme song for Giving Thursdays.


Coming up next week:  Creating School Kits for Church World Services