Giving Thursday #6: Operation Christmas Child

 

For our 6th Giving Thursday, we hosted Ty's Cub Scout troop and created boxes for Operation Christmas Child.  Tyler and Megan had a great time picking out toys for their "friends" and actually started to get over the fact that they couldn't keep them for themselves.


We started with this video and talked about how different Christmas can be in different parts of the world.  Since we were focused on being a citizen for the meeting, we talked about how we don't just need to be citizens of our town, city, state, or country, but also of the world.  It was a fun night and a project I'm definitely interested in doing again next year.

Halloween 2012

Our Halloween (or should I say Halloweens) was great this year.  A party at the gymansitics "parent's night out," trunk-or-treating with the Cub Scouts, and learning how to trick or treat in our new neighborhood (most do it in cars or golf carts...and everyone sits out at where the street meets their driveway) made for lots of candy collection and a good deal of variety.  Tinkerbell and the ninja had a lot of fun.

Click here for more pics.

The first joint soccer season--Fall 2012

Tyler and Megan had a lot of fun playing for two different teams with the same name (and we had lots of fun watching them).  Click on the photo below for more.

Giving Thursday #5: Making Giving Boxes

After a short break due to a couple weeks of travel for work (although Jeff did do some activities with the kids, but I'll let him write about those), we continued our new tradition a few days ago with an activity that will hopefully encourage ongoing giving:  Making giving boxes/containers.  I got this idea from a fellow Big Hearted Families pilot family.

The idea is that they decorate the containers and put them in their closet to collect toys or clothes that they'd like to give to someone who needs them.  We started with a video to give them a bit more perspective about how many people throughout the world have so much less than them and closed with a reflection activity shared on the Big Hearted Families site. 

After the small protest that arose after I explained that they should go through their closets and play room to see if there was anything they'd like to donate, I was very surprised when I went upstairs and saw quite a bit in each of the containers.  I was also happy to see Ty's reflection below.

Ty's picture of himself taking items out of the closet and putting them in his donation box.