As you know, if you’ve been reading, for quite some time, I’ve occasionally been running little installments called “Mama’s K.I.S.S.” I know that lots of readers could give many more and far more creative ideas than I can offer, but these installments are just a few tried and true and mostly old-fashioned ideas for putting service hearts in our kids. This is number 57 of a list of one hundred ways we train our kids to serve. K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Kids In Service Suggestions”.
This one’s fun, especially in the springtime, and particularly if you live in an area where there are lots of wildflowers. You just hand your child a cheap vase and say, “Go outside and make this as pretty as you can with the flowers that God has clothed (Matthew 6:28-30). We are going to take flowers to Sister Jones.”
If you live in an apartment complex or in a crowded subdivision, you may have to take your kids to an area where the Queen Anne’s Lace or whatever the blooming things are in your area, are covering the roadside. Take these flowers home, shake the tiny bugs off, and lay the flowers out for kids to choose what looks good in their vases. Then be sure to have them make cards or notes to give the elderly recipients along with their bouquets.
Kids love this activity. I have early memories of teen girls in our congregation coming over to my house to help the pre-teen girls pick flowers and assemble them. Then these high school seniors drove us middle schoolers around to deliver to widows in our congregation. It was a service project I will never forget…so fun, so simple and so directly related to the bottom of Matthew 25!
If you’re working in autumn or winter, it’s little more challenging, but it still works so well with cotton and ivy in the fall, or with holly and magnolia leaves in winter.
