My husband and I are coming up on our seven year anniversary and I couldn’t be happier. My time with him has been the happiest and most fulfilling of my life and I am so excited to continue our adventure together. When I fell in love with him it was the type of love that started out as a huge ease that I felt around him until it became a love that swallowed me up whole and I knew I didn’t want to live life without him. Then when we decided that it was time to add to our family I was humbled and thrilled at the thought of what lay before us.
Getting married and having children has taught me so many different things about love. After I had my first child I had a little personal revelation that getting married taught me what it felt like to want to share my world with someone else and having a child taught me what it felt like to want to give someone the world. The only problem is that the world is not the perfect place that I would wish to give my children. So many things going on in the world today are discouraging and heartbreaking to say the least.
The bad news too is that sometimes the problems and the sadness of the world can be distracting from all the beauty and wonderfulness that exists regardless and always will. As a mother it is my hope to be able to teach my children to always look for and celebrate the good in the world. The really exciting part of this for me is the part where I also get to help them realize that they are a part of the good in the world and not only are they good, but they can spread their goodness to create more good.
Isn’t that what we want as mothers? To raise children who realize their potential and influence in the world? To help them realize that and be empowered by the fact that even now, at a young age they can make a positive difference? To help increase their awareness of the world around them and to connect more with their community? Yes! It sounds like such an enormous job, and really the weight and importance of it is, but I believe the process really isn’t all as complicated as we might think.
How can we raise kind children then? Well, first and foremost I feel it is our responsibility to model kindness and love. You can’t really expect a child to understand and share something that they haven’t felt and experienced themselves. This really is the biggest difference I think that we, as mothers, can make. Is to simply love them. After that there really are millions of little ways. Everything from discussions, to opportunities for them to do service, to reading books about empathy and so much more.
That is where my idea for the “Spread Love Random Acts of Kindness Challenge” comes in. This Valentines season I really wanted to create something to help teach my children more about love and to help show them the positive impact that they can have in our community through spreading love. I created a calendar of 14 simple activities leading up to Valentines Day (so from Feb.1st-Feb 14th) that will help us achieve that.
I made sure that they were all super simple and focused on love. They can be as quick or as time consuming as you would like and take few to no supplies. The activities range from calling someone that you haven’t spoken to in a while to tell them what you appreciate about them to donating used books to your local library and leaving a small note and gift to thank someone who serves in your community.
Then, because you all know I have a passion for using books to open discussion and teach, I created a list of 14 AWESOME books that teach about spreading love and making a positive impact in communities that you can use alongside this challenge if you would like (a book a day). I had so much fun picking out titles that I think are empowering and inspiring.
To implement this in our home I created a banner with each of the activities on hearts that I strung on string and have up on the wall. They are all in the order that we will do them and I think I will use a clothespin marker to help us keep progress of where we are at in our challenge.
To make things super easy I did all the hard work already. I created a free printable packet that includes: a calendar for February that you can print off with the activities listed on it, a sheet that explains each activity in a little more detail, the book list that you can take to your library and a few pages with the activities on hearts that you can cut out to create your own countdown/advent banner if you would like. (I also think they would be great on the fridge, a paper chain, in a basket, or anything else you can think up!)
I am SO excited to get started and hope that this activity will help my children to learn more about the nature of love and how they can spread it in the world around them. I hope doing these activities brings them joy regardless of whether or not they see an immediate outcome and if they do see some of the joy they spread then that is wonderful too. I also hope that it will be a useful tool for you and your family and that together we can celebrate the beauty in the world and help make it an even more wonderful place for all of us.
I will be sharing bits of our journey “spreading love” on instagram (@book.nerd.mommy) and would love it if you joined along! Share photos of your “spread love” adventure with the hashtag #booknerdmommy and I will be thrilled to hear how it is going!
Go ahead and download the free printables for personal use through the link below and if you want to save this challenge for later (These activities can be done anytime in the year, not just for Valentines day!) then just pin the image below.
Click here to download the Spread Love Challenge Packet:
If you want to download it in sections, use the links below:
14 books that teach about spreading love
Yearly Calendar Updates:
To save this for later pin the image below:
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