My heart is full!! #actsofkindness, #givingback

I am so proud of my kids at school this week!! I teach Junior Kindergarten at a private school. We join together with the Kindergarten class for a lot of activities. One thing we love to do is party!!! We celebrate the children's birthdays quarterly with a "Giving Party". Our Giving Party is fun for the kids and we get to help an organization in our community at the same time. We pick a community organization and the children bring in wrapped gifts that will be donated to that organization. The birthday children are the stars of the party and they get to open the gifts. They know they don't get to keep them and the joy they receive from opening these gifts is amazing. We usually have parents that attend and shed some tears after seeing how excited to kids are. It is an amazing opportunity to teach the children how important it is to help in the community. During the party, we rotate through stations which are usually a game, snack and activity. The party this week just happened to be mine...we have 4 teachers and 4 parties so we each get to plan one. The past couple of years the organization I have chosen to help is Footprints in the Community. They offer summer camps for children with Special Needs. Click here to learn more about Footprints. The need for them is arts and craft supplies to use in their summer camp programs. Our children always love to pick out fun new art things to wrap and bring in. Who doesn't like to shop for new art supplies?? The founder of Footprints in the Community has been able to join us for our parties and she brings children who will benefit from our donations. It's always great to hear how what we are doing is going to help others. We also have an activity during one of our stations that is a handmade item that we can send with them to be used. This time we made colored sand that can be used for art projects. In the past we have done play dough and water colors. I just warms my heart when we have our Giving Parties. I look forward to watching the kids grow and continue to be community partners in our area. I'm glad to be nurturing a group of children with giving hearts!!