TV-free activity #200: Houses for Change
I believe children inherently want to give back to the community. Yet many of the volunteer opportunities in our community aren’t suited for our smallest helping hands. This is a great activity from Family Promise that can foster the spirit of giving from an early age.
Houses for Change is an award-winning educational crafts project for kids to raise awareness of homelessness and raise funds to help homeless families. It is a national campaign that answers the question, "What can I do to help?"
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(photos from Houses for Change)
Using magic markers, crayons, collage material, stickers and your imagination, decorate a plain box to look like a house. Take the box home and in the following weeks or months fill the box with loose change. At a selected date, for example Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Easter or the end of the school year, families bring their filled boxes back to the participating organization for a communal donation to Family Promise, or a local homeless organization or both.
Houses for Change has universal appeal. It has been adopted by schools, congregations, homeless organizations, the United Way, and the YMCA to engage their youth in a meaningful service project. The decorated boxes can be used at community service days and birthday parties as piggy banks; at churches as Advent, Lenten and collection boxes; and at synagogues as tzedakah boxes.
I hope your family, scouting group, or place of worship considers supporting this project.
Jayne’s book recommendation to go with this activity:
“I Can Hear the Sun” by Patricia Polacco 1999. Penguin Young Readers Group. Grades 2–5.
School Library JournalGr 2-4-Polacco introduces an unusual cast of characters in this modern myth. Stephanie Michele works in the park caring for the wildlife, and, unofficially, for the homeless folks who live there. A boy, Fondo, shows up one day and seems to belong. Stephanie and Fondo share a sensitivity to nature that others can't comprehend or appreciate. Then, they learn that the people at the settlement house where Fondo lives plan to send him away because he is a special-needs case. He runs away and accepts an invitation by the geese to fly away with them. The park "family" vow to keep his disappearance a secret, but readers are let in on this "true story" because Polacco knows Stephanie Michele personally. This picture book that points up the need for acceptance of all sorts of people is filled with graceful language and deftly rendered multimedia artwork done in predominantly earth tones. The artist places her subjects center stage on the white pages and does an expert job of capturing their poses and expressions with an economy of line and touches of color. This title is similar to Polacco's Boat Ride with Lillian Two Blossom (Philomel, 1988; o.p.) in the suspension of reality, yet her writing always seems somehow, magically, to make anything possible.-Sharon R. Pearce, San Antonio Public Library, TX