100 Acts of Kindness: Letters

Not long ago I posted about a Kindness Challenge. We cut our hearts out and left little messages around the house for each other. My older girls even left notes for their baby brother (who of course would have eaten them, had he found them). It was sweet. I hope we keep (read: I hope *I* keep doing that for my loved ones) doing that through the year, leaving random notes of sweetness or silliness in unexpected places for each other.

This week, the challenge from the bloggers behind 100 Acts of Kindness is to doing something for members of the community, such as librarians, teachers, members of the military. We happen to know someone who is deployed right now, so we spent yesterday afternoon (not the whole afternoon, who am I kidding? I can only wrangle this active kiddos for about 20 minutes) writing notes and coloring pictures for this friend of ours. My 5 yr old was super efficient with his time and also colored a picture for Yael, the little girl we sponsor in Mexico.

I had found these fun sets of blank note cards at Target, on clearance. Knowing I was hoping to write more notes myself and encourage the kiddos to do the same, I picked them up. It’s more fun to write a note when the stationary is bright and cheery! You can also use any kind of paper for your letters and pictures. If the recipient of your kindness is anything like my children, they’ll be delighted to have a piece of unexpected mail waiting for them in their mailbox, fancy stationary or not.

Other ideas for this week’s challenge: surprise a neighbor with baked goods, leave chalk messages on the sidewalk, leave a note for the mailman or other delivery person (we might sneak a note in our milk box for the milk man! And yes, we do really have a milk man.)

Over at Toddler Approved where these ideas are coming from (sign up for the newsletter if you haven’t yet, and you’ll get a weekly challenge email), they are keeping count of each act of kindness in their families. Me, not so much. With 5 kids, home schooling, and a husband who is a full-time student as well, there is no way I can manage to keep track of their acts of kindness. In my eyes, it’s fantastic that we’re doing them, and that in little ways, I can see my kids taking kindness to heart and doing or saying more kind things without my gentle poking and prodding, er, nudging and encouraging.

I am excited to see what next week’s challenge will be, and find more ways we can make random and intentional acts of kindness a constant part of our lives.