The Kindness Calendar

This year, along with our regular advent calendar Christmas countdown, we (I) decided that we would add a random act of kindness to our calendar.

“But, can we still get our chocolate?” pleads my son.

Yes. We’ll do both.

When I talked to a girlfriend of mine, it turns out that she was planning on doing the same thing with her three boys.
So, in combination with a conversation with her (who learned about it from her hairdresser), a few Pinterest searches, and a few ideas of my own, we came up with a chart.

My husband and I will go through them and pick which ones to include. We would like to make it so the boys can do most them on their own without help from us.

Click on the Chart for a Printable of our Random Acts Cards
We will also steal my friend’s way of executing the plan.

Each morning the boys will draw the card from the pouch of the advent calendar. They will read the card at breakfast, and will be asked to complete that task that day. At supper time, they will report back on their progress.

My kids are cynical. “Mommy, we won’t make it past two days!” My husband isn’t much more hopeful.
But, I am bound and determined that we will give this our best shot to make it realistic and a positive experience!

I have set up the Advent calendar and filled it with chocolates. I have also picked 24 cards from our chart that we will use and put them in the pockets.

However, when I was stuffing the pockets, I had our family calendar beside me! Which activities were realistic based on our activities that day?

Stay tuned for our progress! I will update this blog post as we go along with some pictures!

Day 1: Compliment 2 people today!

We opened the slip of paper at breakfast and talked about how to give compliments. Right off the bus, the first thing out of their mouths was… “I complimented two people today!!” They were so excited to share their stories!

Day 8: Candycane Bomb

So far, so good! The boys have been coming home every day and have at least tried to complete the task.

Yesterday, our task was to candycane bomb a parking lot – put candycanes on every car. We decided to tape it to the passenger window with masking tape so it wouldn’t leave a mark and to make sure the drivers noticed it (unlike under the windshield wipers).

We decided to do this at our church – right before the service -mostly because we knew the crowd and knew that they would not be upset by the task!

The boys were quite concercned that we were doing something illegal! They were a bit embarassed to do the task, but when they came out of church and heard all the comments, they were beaming — and still kept the secret – although most people figured it out!

Day 15: Donate a Stuffed Animal to the Police Station

The police will often carry a stuffed animal in their cars so in case they come across a child in an accident or fire, they are able to give them something for comfort. After much delibteration, we decided to buy a stuffed animal each to donate.

This by far was the hardest task. The kids really wanted to buy something for themselves, but they resisted! Then, they wanted to keep the stuffies for themselves.

But, I was really proud. They walked into the station, explained the donation, and handed them over. A great lesson!

Overall:

We managed to do all but 2 or 3 of the tasks! We couldn’t shovel someone’s driveway because we actually didn’t have snow this year!

Our favourite acts ended up being:

– Make a meal for a busy family

– Candycane bomb a parking lot (even though they were hesitant about doing it)

– Bringing treats to the school staff

– Paying for the people behind us in the Tim Horton’s Drive Thru

This is definitely something we will continue to do every year!

Do you have any ideas for other random acts? Do you do this with your family? Tell me about your experiences!

Other friends had differing experiences.

– One friend’s children were a bit younger than mine (oldest is 7). To them, doing the Random Acts felt more like doing chores that they didn’t get paid for. They were a bit too young to understand the concept

– Another friend has a random act of kindness BLITZ day. They see how many random acts they can do in one day – including giving a gift card to someone in the grocery story line up!