I must admit that I have hesitated to write about our December kindness acts.  Originally, my only goal in this journey was to teach my boys to take time to consider others in this world. However, I have been reflecting on how powerful and important it can be to share positive messages.   So, my intentions with this process now include to influence and inspire others to be kind and share kindness.    With that, I am telling the story of how our month of kindness began and what we will be doing this December.

Last year, when debating the idea of an advent calendar, I decided that instead of my kids getting little treats each day, it would make a much bigger impact on their lives (and the world around us) to perform an act of kindness for another person.  Our elderly neighbor had recently lost her husband and while she is an active lady, I knew she must be lonely at times.  So, we put her at the top of our list of people who we wanted to make smile.  We brought her homemade muffins and cookies, special drawings but probably the most meaningful was the time we spent with her in her home.  Teachers were also at the top of the list and received some special goodies like drawings and muffins.

This year, we are stepping it up a bit, as my Oldest is more aware of the effect he and his actions have on others.  Together we talked about things that might make other people smile, what it means to be kind and how important it is to think about people besides ourselves.  We came up with a long list of kindness acts and it was important that the majority of items on our list would be meant for strangers or people who weren’t family or close friends.  Later, I wrote them out on small pieces of paper, folded them up and stored them in a jar.  Each morning our Oldest shakes the jar and takes out one of the cards and that’s how we find out what we will be doing that day.  Some of the items require some prep work like decorating candy canes or making cards, so we will be continuously working on those, while the ingredients for cookies and other edibles are on hand.

A number of these acts will be repeated and I made enough cards to get us through the entire month.  See below for some pictures of our journey so far…

I hope you are inspired to spread some kindness yourself.  We’d love to get some new ideas so please share photos on our Facebook wall or tag us on Instagram.

Happy Holidays.