Bag of hope

Doing good in our community is sadly not something that comes natural to all of us. Teaching children at a young age helps it become something we do on a daily basis. Performing random acts of kindness as simple as opening doors, and helping out the less fortunate, creates a ripple effect that goes on and on.

At the Playschool we identify the need for more helping hands, and luckily had 68 little hands to help out Bag of Hope. And that was only the 34 children in our class, not to mention their families and the families at Hardisty!

We began collecting items in November, and this week we put the items into the back packs.

We collected the same thing the adults need such as mittens, hats, scarves and socks. We included more children fun things like stickers, books and toys.

Choosing our own lollypops to share

I am so proud of the children for taking time out of their play to pick out various items to put into backpacks. Some had a hard time when we reminded them the bag was for others and not for them, but once informed in an age appropriate way they smiled and let me know they were okay with sharing. It's not always easy to donate, or give but it is enriching, needed and creates a community of care and support.

It also was good for the children physically. The children unzipped the backpacks on their own, used  their fine motor skills to pick up the items and put them inside of the bags, and then zip them back up before carrying them to the pile with the other backpacks.The children were allowed to pick out the items from a pile to give to a boy or girl, creating a sense of ability, knowing I trusted their decision - even if some items in the girl backpacks ended up blue. They also helped me with all of the counting and sorting.

I invited CTV into the class to observe the children working away like bees to stuff back packs for other children. We were so lucky to have them agree to come in, as well as some friends from Bag of Hope. We will be featured in an ongoing news report for CTV called "the 12 days of Christmas giving" I saw the Bag of Hope on the 12 days of Christmas giving last year, and am so thankful that they planned to do it again this year, and wanted to include the playschool on it.

I am SO excited about the waves the children have made while doing good for the community. Personally, these 36 3 and 4 year olds have inspired me to do 25 days of Random Acts of Kindness until Christmas!


If you still want to help out Bag of Hope is still accepting Adult items until December 6th. Check out the website to contribute.

Sincerely,
Ms Asha