Operation Christmas Child ~ Keep It Simple, Sister

I love to find ways to encourage my children to have charitable hearts. We started making shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child when they were preschoolers. They were so excited when they were little. They wanted to hold all of the things and put them into the boxes over and over again. Then when the box lids went on and they realized the stuff really wasn't for them, oh! how the tears flowed...

2007

Things go much better these days. My kids look forward to doing these boxes each year. This year I really wanted to keep it simple. I hadn't managed to collect very much throughout the year, but we did have some sweet teddy bears and small stuffed animals. Every child should have something to love and hold. We decided to build our boxes around the stuffed animals. The kids decided we should have art supplies, stuffed animals, soap, and toothpaste. We went to the store to get some personal hygiene items and set all of our stuff up in an assembly line.

(Left to right ~ candy, pens, art supplies,  fast food toys, cards, toothpaste, toothbrush,
bags of soap, small and big stuffed animals)

The kids made bags of  art supplies for each box. Each bag contains a glue stick, scrapbook paper, stickers, pens, and craft scissors.

We assembled the boxes and wrote letters to each child.

Each box contained a small and large stuffed animal, a new fast food toy, small bag of hard candy, toothpaste and toothbrush, art supplies bag, and a few small bars of soap. We kept it real simple this year.

2015 ~ My babies are growing up!

We usually look through a book that shows life in Third World countries when we make our boxes. One of our favorite books in the past was Material World. This year we enjoyed Toy Stories: Photos of Children from Around the World and Their Favorite Things.

National collection week is November 16 - 23 this year.

Blessings, Dawn