Spell Out Loud

I am excited to be a part of the Summer of Service A.C.T.S. blog tour! You’ll be seeing several other bloggers sharing about this opportunity during the next couple of months. Why? Because serving others is something I want my kids to learn how to do not only in special settings but as a lifestyle. I want them to have eyes to see where they might be able to fill a need for someone, cheer someone up, help someone with a task–without expecting anything in return. This mindset doesn’t come automatically. In fact, I’m still working on it! Half the time I get so absorbed in my life and my schedule that I forget to see how God might use me to help others.

Collecting and crushing cans for a service project.

Having intentional service activities and opportunities through the year helps my kids and I to focus on others. During the fall/winter we worked on collecting items for Operation Christmas Child. In the summer my older children will spend a week serving our local community in various projects such as roofing houses, painting, sorting food for the local food bank and more. My younger children will be doing several service-related projects in their Sunday School this summer (with family involvement too.) Here are some projects/activities that we (my own kids/local church) have done in the past:

• Plan and play games with nursing home residents
• Organize food at our local food bank
• Serve meals at our local food bank
• Collect trash
• Hand out flowers to nursing home residents
• Make fleece blankets for local shelters
• Make hygiene bags for local shelters
• paint things– picnic tables, benches, houses
• weed gardens
• clean bathrooms
• wash cars
• bake cookies

If you need more service ideas, Adventures in Odyssey has a weekly service calendar handout that is customizable! (Save to your computer and then open if it is not viewing correctly.) They also are sharing a free mp3 of one of their radio episodes– Business of Busyness.

Adventures in Odyssey is joining with Christian bookstores across the country inviting kids to participate in a Summer of Service. They’re promoting the biblical message, “When you serve, everybody wins,” encouraging kids to serve their families, their communities, and their world. Whether it’s baking cookies for an elderly neighbor or putting together a care package for missionaries overseas,
kids will discover that serving can be a blast!

How the A.C.T.S. (A Call to Service) challenge and contest works:

Kids who join A.C.T.S. can pick up a service log and collect fun character stickers for hours served at participating bookstores throughout the summer, or download a serving log online at whitsend.org. At the end of the summer, kids can record and upload a short video telling how they serve and why they’d like to become an Adventures in Odyssey Ambassador.

A hundred winners will get the brand new AIO Album, and after online voting, two grand prize winners (one boy and one girl) will get to travel on an exciting Good-Goers Mission Based Adventure trip to another country with a parent! The out-of-country destination will be announced on a live podcast May 22—hosted by AIO actors Katie Leigh (Connie) and Chris Anthony (Chris)—which you can watch at whitsend.org/acts. You don’t want to miss it!

Join Adventures in Odyssey this summer to discover how fun it can be to serve others!

What tips do you have to help children learn to help others?

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