volunteering

Hello, yes, we have volunteering in our home school. I consider it being a civic duty to help out in your community and so we volunteer in different ways. We volunteer at our local pet shelter. I am on the board and help out with animal bios that help give each animal character and they also use these to show to larger facilities that we have a relationship with so that some of our long timers can have a chance in a bigger environment and if they feel they can place the animal then we will transfer them. We also help groom when we can and my kids are the chief teachers at the local schools to teach young children how to take care and be responsible for a cat or dog. This has been a very successful program as well. My son is nervous around dogs and so he mainly helps out in the cattery. My daughter has dreams of working with animals someday in some capacity.

We help the lady at our local library with toddler time. She loves to not only read, but do crafts too and we have several moms who have more than one little one there and so my kids just help moms handle multiples and we help set up while the lady reads and we also help clean up afterwards.  My son is really great with 1-2 years olds and has been known to keep them occupied while their moms are able to help or spend a few moments with the older sibling doing a craft.

We have also volunteered a meal and to serve said meal to our church’s CCD class.

The trick is to not volunteer for more than you are capable of doing and you just learn by trial and error what that is for your family. I always keep in mind that we can’t help others if we haven’t taken care of ourselves first. Kids love to volunteer and this is just another incentive to keep up with our studies and chores.

I started them in volunteering because I have very fond memories of doing so with my church group as a child. It was a very special group and the adults in charge were beyond awesome. I remember that every weekend they had a new project for us. One week we would change out a sink for an elderly church member. WE would watch and help. One week we painted an entire small home for another elderly woman. another week we learned all about changing oil and tires on your car.  I was probably 5-8th grade during all this and i learned so much from those home repair projects. I want to do the same for my kids because I believe that is what helped me to be so well rounded and not afraid to step out of the gender roles.

Hope this is what you were looking for.