You've focused on teaching your children thankfulness and now your children are wondering, "What will I get for Christmas?" Use the following ideas to bridge the gap.
Children, like most adults, view life through their own experiences. If you used Thanksgiving to show them how to recognize all the good things that they have in their lives, now is the time to teach them to convert that thankfulness into generosity. The best way to do that is to connect the idea of giving with what they already know in their own lives.
Giving to the Elderly – A Gift that Gives Back
Adopt an elderly person at a local nursing home. Find a nursing home near your house and call to see if they need volunteers. They probably will, nursing homes always need volunteers. You can do various things at a nursing home including:
- Write down memories for an elderly person.
- Visit the Alzheimer’s ward – often these patients will become more alert and happier when they see small children.
- Adopt-a-grandparent and commit to weekly visits. This option is particularly rewarding for your children. They learn to relate to older people and find that they can learn from them. It is like having another grandparent (if their grandparents don’t live nearby, this is particularly nice).
Give an Animal
This option may sound a bit strange but it is fun for children. Children love animals and if they understand what they are doing, they will talk about it and imagine what will happen. Several organizations send out unique Christmas catalogs. The recipient then browses the catalog and finds a gift in their price range and purchase the gift for a needy family. Many of these gifts are animals and range from chickens to water buffalo. The catalog explains how the animal will be beneficial to the family so that you and your children can understand why you are giving them this particular gift.
Some gifts have an option where you can buy part of the gift. For example, if you want to give something that is too expensive for your family you can buy part of it. When enough shares are purchased, the organization will buy the animal and give it to a family.
A nice feature of most of these organizations is that they will send you a card commemorating the gift. This is especially nice for families with smaller children as it gives them a visual and tangible reminder of what they’ve done. Two good organizations for the giving of animals are Samaritan’s Purse and Heifer International
Give Presents to Another Child
Have your child buy presents for another child. This project is particularly easy to tie back to Thanksgiving. As you and your child shop for another child, remind your child of the things they have and are thankful for. Remind your child that the child you are shopping for may not have any of these things. Check your community for local opportunities and consider the following national and international organizations.
- Angel Tree provides gifts to the children of prisoners whose families are often too poor to buy gifts for the children.
- Marine Toys for Tots collects and purchases unwrapped gifts for needy children.
- Operation Christmas Child is a charity of Samaritan’s Purse that distributes shoeboxes full of gifts to children around the world:
