Our kids get inundated with candy. Between the holidays, birthday parties, and festival parades, it’s an endless supply of sweets. After Halloween yesterday, I decided to do something good with it and teach a life lesson at the same time. This morning, I talked to my children about sharing their load of goods.
Earlier this month, after staring googly-eyed at the sheer mass of parade candy they had hauled in from our town’s festival parade, I decided to look up what to do with that excess candy. I quickly found that there were a load of options for candy donations (this is just one quick list of many available). I was happy to see that there are many operations around the country for helping send candy to our troops overseas. Bingo! A lesson in sharing is staring me in the face, and we can bring some extra smiles along the way. Bring on Halloween. I’m ready!
So, this morning, the day after Halloween, I told the children about the opportunity to share their candy with our troops. I intentionally did not use the word “donate” but the word “share,” because that’s exactly what we are doing: We are sharing what we have for others. I also told them to imagine the look on the soldiers faces when they open their care packages and see a bunch of their favorite candy from the States. That put instant smiles on their little faces as the scene played out in their minds. They were excited to participate! They were excited to share their candy!! I got extra help from my daughter who had to stay home (too much junk food the night before — more on that later), and it was wonderful to see her joyfully piling most of the parade candy and some of their Halloween candy into the box to ship out. Not only did I rid the house of an unnecessary excess of confectionery, I gave a sweet lesson on sharing and will eventually bring some joy to our men and women serving our country overseas. I call that a win-win-win. Simply google “donate candy“, talk about sharing and bringing joy to others, and you can win-win-win too!
Mommy's Gotta Practice! 