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Post by mama2three on Oct 9, 2015 12:09:23 GMT
At age 9-10, our GS troop was doing the following:
Weeding the food pantry garden Starting seeds for that garden Picking and delivering excess produce from neighborhood gardeners to food pantry Bagging groceries at the food pantry Picking up trash in the neighborhood and throughout the local parks Helping remove invasive weeds in a local nature preserve Helping rake leaves or plant flowers Making activity bags for the local social service center to keep kids occupied while parents met with councillors Reading or doing games with kids at the homeless shelters Visiting nursing home to sing, play card or board games or just visit with residents Making toys for the animal shelter. Making polar fleece scarves to donate Collecting old Halloween costumes to bring to kids at homeless shelter and setting up a Halloween party for them. Making sandwiches for the food bank's soup and sandwich night.
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Post by *sprout* on Oct 9, 2015 12:20:40 GMT
Marking my place! There are some great ideas!
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Post by Heart on Oct 9, 2015 12:27:37 GMT
I absolutely concur- visit a nursing home or assisted living facility near you. Your kids can sing or play games, make a craft, pass out cards or just sit in the parlor and visit. I know "nursing home" can sound scary and hospital-y, but many are very nice and are -- just like home---.
Residents desperately miss children and love to just SEE them, and interacting with them sends them over the moon. You can easily rack up lots of your required hours and everyone feels good about it. You could call the activity director and let him/her know you are coming and they may have an organized activity your family can take part in.
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sweetpeasmom
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 2,592
Jun 27, 2014 14:04:01 GMT
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Post by sweetpeasmom on Oct 9, 2015 12:38:25 GMT
My dd (11) has been volunteering for the last couple of years in various ways. She does pageants and focuses on the pageants that are community service driven. In these systems, there are girls as young as your 6 yo that work with us. Here are somethings she has done or will be doing this year.
-This month is October, so she will be collecting socks for the homeless, calling it Socktober. -Her sister queens will be going to a senior center and doing make-overs on the residents -The Big Thank You - writing letters to our service men and women. This is actual local here but letters come from all over the country. She will go next month to help sort the letters -http://bigthankyou2015.com/ -Making cookies/goodies for the fire department -Coat drive -Collecting supplies for a battered women's shelter -visiting an animal shelter -partnered with Comfort Cases to collect pjs and new books for children taken into the foster system -made Valentines for the children's hospital -walks for a cause - Autism walk, March of Dimes walk, etc. She walks sometimes but lots of times they are just there helping pass out waters, cheer the walkers on, etc. -Special Olympics - This weekend (tonight and tomorrow) we will be at opening ceremonies and then working at 2 different events -Help at a food pantry (ours is on a Sat)
Yes, as the parent, I am involved in a lot of this. But that's ok. We enjoy doing it together. Some of it obviously takes more than 2hrs a month. She loves doing community service and has a great time. Some of these items, she has come up with on her own.
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Post by anxiousmom on Oct 9, 2015 12:38:40 GMT
My mom is a Master Gardener and is very active with her local association. They always have a need for volunteers for various programs that they run, along with things like weeding their showcase gardens and working in the community. One of the fun things for them is that because of the area we live in, the group is heavily weighted with grandparents and they love working with kids of all ages, it gives them a chance to try to innculcate ( ) the kids into the cult of garden love. (That is a joke-they just enjoy teaching the kids an appreciation of nature.) My mom works a lot with teaching the kids how to use native plants and her sister's project is a local elementary school's vegetable garden. Maybe you can call the local Master Gardener's/Agriculture Extension office? (A lot of them are associated with universities.)
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Post by stampinfraulein on Oct 9, 2015 17:28:48 GMT
There is a website called justserve.org that can help you find volunteer opportunities in your community. You just put in your zip code and it will give you a list of opportunities. Some will be child-friendly and some will be for adults but it is a good resource!
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Post by Miss Lerins Momma on Oct 14, 2015 15:32:26 GMT
Thanks for all of the suggestions! I have made a few phone calls to different places!
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MerryMom
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 2,539
Jul 24, 2014 19:51:57 GMT
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Post by MerryMom on Oct 14, 2015 19:05:16 GMT
Contact your local children services agency. We used to have students and church youth group members come in twice a month to clean the toys in our toy area in the waiting room. They would also check the board games to be sure all the piece were there. For a 6 or 10 year old, the parent would have to be present and supervise. We had them schedule their time when we were open. We do close at 6 pm, but we are open on Saturday mornings for supervised visits only, so that was an available time as well.
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