Children can only write so many letters to full-time missionaries. Or out-of-state family members. They can only color so many pictures destined for the walls of the local hospital. They usually need a great deal of supervision during large-scale service projects, at least in my experience. Believe me, I’ve brainstormed this kid-friendly service project issue plenty, especially when I served as a Primary president in my local LDS ward. At least once a year, we tried to plan a meaningful service project for the children ages 4-11 in our congregation. Trying to find something they could do well that was also more than mere busy work was sometimes difficult. Yes, singing Christmas carols in nursing homes during the holiday season was a wonderful tradition, but what about the other eleven months of the year?
And what about in our homes? I recognize that the ability to work and serve others starts at home. That’s the problem! (Can you hear me giggling?) My children work hard, oh yes! But only in ten-minute bursts. And only when I stay on duty as task master. I can leave them in their rooms to work, but I know that after about ten minutes or so, bookshelf “dusting” will morph into bookshelf “skimming”. The “sorting” of toys turns into “playing” with toys. On one occasion, the “making” of the bed turned into “sleeping” IN the bed. I want my children to know the joy that comes in working hard, especially on behalf of other people, but our progress has been mostly in fits and starts.
And so it was with gratitude (and fatigue) that I piggybacked onto a friend’s kid service project activity a few years ago. She had hit that same wall of struggling to teach her kids about meaningful service work to others. It must be noted that her children were even better than mine about cleaning their rooms. Still, she wanted them to be doing something more. And so she brainstormed, made phone calls to a local nature preservation group, arranged supplies and extended invitations to some friends of her children and their families to a quarterly-ish litter pick-up activity, needy parks to be determined.
Through Keep Brazos Beautiful, the aforementioned local organization, she received a dozen orange litter claws – those metal contraptions that make the picking up of litter easier … and safer. (There are some yucky things lining the creek beds in our community, at least!) And she also purchased an enormous role of extra-strength garbage bags so that we could haul our pickings out. She also called the local park and recreation department, at least at first, but we were soon able to select filthy parks on our own.
It’s also important to note that she brought pizza to that first activity. Five or six boxes! This stack of cheesy, goey goodness was the carrot dangling in front of our litter-grabbing children: pick up litter for an hour, enjoy pizza with friends. Over the months, we took turns bringing the pizza, water, fruit, snacks, but always made sure there was something yummy at the end. The presence of something tasty to eat at the end of the activity elevated these park clean-up sessions to parties. However, I think the children would have enjoyed grabbing litter, even without the pizza. They loved being able to swing and play in these parks that they had helped to beautify.
At the first Saturday morning activity, the children immediately took to litter disposal. They had fun scouring the grounds for cigarette butts and crumpled food wrappers. They were careful not to touch glass bottles, crushed cans, or used condoms. (We found plenty of all of those items!) The broken toilet dumped into a deep ravine was beyond our reach, yes, but the children (and grown-ups) did work hard in our area parks. Even the littlest children in our group could help by working as trash detectives. They would shout at each other, “Come look at what I found!” with the enthusiasm of children on an Easter egg hunt, except they were finding faded potato chip bags and old diapers. Yeah, old diapers! Who discards a diaper next to a playground? Plenty of people, it seems.
This litter pick up was a service project that worked! The kids stayed on task, understood the plan, needed very little reminding or instructions, and had a blast. We never ran out of parks, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, my friend and her family moved away, and with them, went the organizing momentum, but on the day before she left town, she brought me a gift. Inside the box were those orange litter claws. They are waiting for our next park clean-up activity. All I need to do is pick a park and order some pizza!
Do you have any kid-friendly service project ideas to share? Any notable successes? Hilarious failures?
I love it that you did this, Erin–and that your friend had the vision to think it up and the organizational skills and motivation to actually pull it off. Sometimes I think I do too much ruminating/grousing and not enough action.
My sister and her kids routinely take food to the Ronald McDonald’s house in Houston, where their family benefited greatly when their youngest had complications at birth. It’s always a great experience for their family.
But you’re right–it does seem tough to think of productive things they can do.
Brent and I have talked about doing some kind of family service trip–but truth be told–the kids probably wouldn’t be very helpful. Or would they?
Erin, one (among many) thing I love about this project is that it’s meaningful to kids. Kids love parks. They can enjoy the fruits of their labors. It creates life-long habits of seeing a problem and doing something about it that will bleed over into other parts of their lives (but even if it didn’t and they only refrain from littering in parks, than it was worth it!).
We did a school supply drive at my girl’s birthday party one year. Their birthdays are at the end of summer when all the supplies are super duper cheap so it didn’t put anyone out really and it was amazing how much stuff we got. Maren also suggested making fleece blankets for the children’s hospital for a YW project once because she had spent almost a week there herself and enjoyed the blanket she was given (many kids- like her- are admitted suddenly and don’t have their own teddy bears, blankets etc).
So it seems like the key to success is a personal connection to the project. I’m interested to hear what others think.
A few years ago a ward I was in got involved with an inter-faith effort to help prisoners in a local prison. At Easter time they did a project that involved delivering cookies to prisoners. The project was already set up and there were guidelines we had to follow about what kind of cookies to bring, etc. They had the Primary help by having kids decorate paper bags to hold the cookies; what I liked was that they did the paper bag decorating at a table in the back of a ward dinner we had–genius idea, since the kids always eat in 5 minutes and then spend the rest of their time circling the gym causing chaos. The next week they asked adult members to make cookies and bring them to the church, then the YM/YW bagged up the cookies and took them to the distributing point. I know it’s not exactly just a kid-oriented service project, but I really liked how this project involved the whole ward in a meaningful way, and I wish other wards I’ve been in would provide something for kids to do during ward dinners!