Books to promote RAOK thinking in our children

[Rosebush3]

What books do you read, or have you read to, your children that promote a Random Acts Of Kindness thinking in your children? We all know that children live what they learn, and what we introduce to them at a young age has a big impact on how they will act as adults.

One of my favorite books to read to my children, well the youngest reads it now by herself too and the oldest outgrew it a few years back but he heard it a lot, is called The Mitten Tree by Candace Christiansen.

The age range for this book is stated at 4 - 8 years old.

It is a short story about an elderly woman, Sarah, who sees children waiting for the school bus in the wintertime, their hands cold and bare. She sets out to knitting mittens, hangs them on the big spruce where the children stand waiting. She does it so noone knows where the mittens come from, or so she thinks, someone does notice and leaves baskets of yarn on her doorstep. Just as she anonymously leaves the mittens on the tree, the baskets mysteriously show up. Her kind deed inspired the same in another. Its a sweet book, well worth a trip to the library if you have a young child.

What book would you recommend?


PS - I have no siggy, no smilies, no avatar - guess I am a little too frugal??

[sweetlittle]

Honestly, we can barely read all that we need to for their school work to get done. But this last summer, my oldest who was 7, wanted to raise money for "Kids Against Hunger" and for cancer research. We thought and thought about what he could do. He is a wonderful artist who loves super heroes. So in the end he drew a cartoon booklet with his own hero fighting crime. Took it to a printer and walked door to door selling them for $1.25. Printing cost .79 cents per booklet so it was an education for him in many ways. I think that reading and teaching how to use our skills and gifts for others always creates wonderful thoughts. Action is the next step which takes courage. We are working toward this instead of reading.

Another thing that promotes RAOK is to always talk about what you are thankful for. We do this right after we say table grace. We each recognize what we are thankful for and this leads to think of others that may not have....

Great topic!

[Rosebush3]

Sweetlittle,
What a wonderful and creative idea you and your son came up with! I am sure he did learn a lot from that and will carry the memory of that for a lifetime. As for the talking about what we are thankful for, with those who matter so much to us, I couldn't agree more. A day hasn't passed I don't tell my children how thankful I am for having them in my life and for getting to be their mother. I am thankful for much. I am thankful for happening upon this site and finding so many like-minded people who are warm, thoughtful and so full of ideas.