Random Act of Kindness

What is a Random Act Of Kindness

Here is how Wikipedia definites a random act of kindness….

“A random act of kindness is a purportedly selfless act performed by a person or persons wishing to either assist or cheer up an individual or in some cases even an animal. There will generally be no reason other than to make people smile, or be happier. Either spontaneous or planned in advance, random acts of kindness are encouraged by various communities.”

I was thinking a lot about my firsts challenge over the next year, and came across a Website that talks about Random Acts of Kindness. I've definitely done my share of R.A.O.K in my life, however, I'm going to continue doing this even more, and do things I haven't done before. I want to go above and beyond the simple acts of kindness. This actually gives me goosebumps thinking about it and I'm getting very excited about all possibilities!!!  Stay tuned...

(i downloaded a free video converter, so the stupid watermark is there-ohwell- you get the idea) For today, I decided to involved my Out-of-School care program, (Ages 5-12) as it's always beneficial to teach children about kindness.  I had a few ideas, and this will definitely not be the first thing I do with them,  however this is what I chose for my first today.

Recently we received telephone books on our front door step and I said to my fiance, (ooooo-wait! This is first time I've written that word down, we are newly engaged!) ...Sorry off topic....I said, "Who even uses these phone books anymore? What a waste of paper!" We agreed they are really only good for looking up restaurants for take-out or delivery options.  Anyways, I did use this phone book today to pick out random names of people.  We made little cards that all included "This is a random act of kindness, so please spread the kindness to another stranger. " We put this message so they knew it wasn't from some weirdo-stalker person! ha! We also included messages like "Smile, someone is thinking of you," and "From Someone who cares" Or "hope you are having a wonderful day" or " I hope this card made you smile" etc etc. You get the idea! I got 8 kids involved in this little project, and all of them were excited about it! They got to choose the person they would send it to, which was a very important part of it. Some kids chose names they liked, some kids chose someone with the same name as them, and some chose a name of a famous person.  After this, we put lottery tickets in the cards and mailed them. :)

I kept thinking how amazing it would be, if someone won money with the little lottery ticket! Even if this doesn't happen, I'm sure that someone will smile because of the effort we put in. The cards were adorable, and I was so caught up in the moment I didn't take a photo of the actual cards, however, I did take a few photos of the kids, and I took a couple videos that I will post a bit later, so come back and check them out- they are really cute! (With parents permission of course ) Overall, it made me feel very happy and kind of bouncy not only to be doing something nice for a stranger, but also to be teaching this lesson to the kids.

Do something nice for a someone you don't know; you could change a life!