Charity

When I sit down and think in the quiet hours of the evening about what I want for my children, one of the things that always comes up is charity. I want my children to have charitable hearts for those less fortunate. I want them to be an active force in their communities when they are grown and to think of others and what they can do to serve them. The best way to train our children in this is to have them serve in their community now and see us serve in our community as well. Our children are so blessed. They have so much while others go without. In light of our children all getting separate rooms in a few weeks, it weighs on my mind all the more how important it is that they know how privileged they are and learn early to care for others. 

I want to reaffirm how we teach our children to be charitable. In the past, we have done charity here and there and then heavily at Christmas time. There seems to be so many opportunities at Christmas time that it is very easy. However, how are we as parents showing our children that charity is one of our core values, if it is not at the forefront of our teachings? To me, when I turn them out into the world in just a few short years, my children's character is more important than their academic abilities. So we are going to put charity at the forefront of our teachings in the next year. Whether it be at home (with sibs) or out and about, it will be one of our driving themes.

To get this new idea started, we are going to pick a charity to focus on each month. For the month of November, we will be raising money for polar bears. This was easy to decide upon because we are studying the Arctic this month. The kids are very interested in polar bears and were sad to see how hard their lives have become due to the change in climate. (We watched the Disney movie, Earth, for our Sunday movie night yesterday.) I was able to find a charity where we could make a tiny impact for $25.  To make this come to life for the kids (instead of Mom writing a check), we are going to earn the money by cutting back in different ways at home.     

• One night this week we will only eat rice for dinner. This will save us about $4.75 from the amount of an average dinner. 
• The kids are going to put any change they find on the ground into the helping jar. I have one child who finds a penny or two almost every time we leave the house! 
• We will skip the Blockbuster Sunday night movie and make do with our public library to find our Sunday night movie. (We often do this anyway.)

Well, that will be a good start. The kids are excited (except Tom Sawyer about eating only rice for dinner -- he never forgets to thank God for food during his evening prayers LOL). If you all have any great ideas of charities, leave them for me in comments. Just as we did last year, we will be doing a charity each week from Thanksgiving through the New year. I still am plotting those charities out.

Blessings, Dawn