It’s October which means I better get my daughter focused on her Halloween costume. Then, there’s the big debate over which candy to hand out. I’m a nougat fan! My husband will take anything with coconut. And, my daughter is a crispy chocolate lover.

What if this Halloween, we give as much attention to the candy wrappers as the candy or the costumes? Thanks to a cool company called Terracycle, you can turn our Halloween candy wrappers into a fundraiser for your kid’s school or a charitable organization. Or, you can coordinate a family and friends activity where you donate your wrappers as part of a recycling effort. Here’s what you should know.

TerraCycle makes affordable, eco-friendly products from a range of non-recyclable waste materials. The company runs free national collection programs that pay schools and nonprofits to collect used packaging such as candy wrappers (as well as drink pouches, energy bar wrappers, yogurt cups, chip bags, and more)! The collected materials are “upcycled” into affordable, high-quality products including tote bags, purses, shower curtains, and kites.  Terracycle’s collection programs prevent tons and tons of waste from going into landfills. 

Terracycle's Starburst Wrapper Lunchbox

This is how it works.  TerraCycle has partnered with Mars/Wrigley and Cadbury to create a second life for candy wrappers through its Candy Wrapper Brigade.  After eating your Halloween candy, save the wrappers to send to Terracycle.  For each candy wrapper received, two cents will be donated to the nonprofit or school of your choice.  If you don’t have an organization in mind, you can choose from their list. Or, if you want to simply donate your wrappers, you can do that, too.  You just need to meet the minimum requirement of 100 wrappers in order to receive a free UPS shipping label.

All you need to do is:

• Form a collection team (which can be a school, an organization, an office, a neighborhood, or a family).
• Pick a team leader to sign up online, and begin collecting.
• Download a free UPS label to ship your wrappers (with a 100 wrapper minimum).

Go to TerraCycle’s Candy Wrapper Brigade for more details. Talk about getting a lot out of one or two bites!  This is a great way to enjoy the treats of Halloween, help reduce waste, and contribute to good cause.

© YesKidzCan!, 2010

Kids learn differently about charitable giving.  While some may gravitate toward community service projects, others may prefer reading a book.  One book that beautifully brings home the message of  acting kindly toward one another is The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes.

The book features a girl named Wanda whose classmates tease her about her Polish name and the faded blue dress she wears to school every day.  Wanda tells them she has 100 pretty dresses at home.  The girls mock Wanda every day until she does not show up at school.  She has moved away and only then do her classmates learn the truth about the dresses and the mistakes they have made.  While written in 1944, this moving Newbury Award winner conveys to this day a timeless lesson of the importance of courage and the generosity of spirit.

© YesKidzCan!, 2010

A recent poll by Family Circle’s Momster website poll reported that experts want parents to restrict the amount of time kids spend playing video games.  44% of moms polled agreed.  51% indicated that if school work and chores were done then a video game break was AOK with them.  5% said they did not have the time to deal with the issue.

I say that one terrific compromise is to let your kids play online games that are educational, fun, and teach them how to think kindly about the world around them.  One online educational site I love is Whyville.

Whyville is the first and largest virtual world for children (ages 8-15) that specializes in learning and engagement.  Whyville works with leading organizations including Disney, NASA, the Centers for Disease Control, the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to create learning games, live events, and educational activities. 

I let my daughter join, and she reported that she – actually the avatar she created – learned how to take care of animals, drive a car, build a energy efficient house, run a power plant in a city, and make nutritious meals.  And that was just for starters! 

I agree that we shouldn’t let our kids become online zombies.  However, it is nice to know that there are resources that offer learning opportunities for our kids and make us as parents feel okay about our kids’ spending an appropriate amount of time playing them!

 © YesKidzCan, 2010

It Can Be as Simple as “Add Water and Stir!”

“I’m so busy!” is the cry heard from moms and dads everywhere.  While this declaration can sound overused and even annoying, the truth is, parents are busy.  What we seek is convenience!  That’s why we love those bags of already-peeled baby carrots, drive-through pharmacies, and one-stop super stores! We are the “add-water-and-stir” generation – we look for what is quick, easy, and simplifies our lives. 

There’s nothing wrong with this label as long as we don’t short-cut the important stuff.  One item that fell in my “important stuff” category was raising caring kids.  As a mom who spent 20 years working in the philanthropy field, I soon discovered that my fellow busy parents would value help teaching their kids about giving back in a way that fits into their hectic lives.

So, when convenience is king, it makes sense to join the kingdom. Go the value-added yet convenient route!  Create for your kids what I call “giving experiences.”  A giving experience is any teachable, memorable, and enjoyable moment that reinforces the value of giving back to you and your kids.  You can read a book about giving back, have a conversation, plan a simple service project together, buy a gift that benefits a cause, and so much more. This is important with research showing that when we engage our young kids in community service, they have greater pride, self-esteem, and are more likely to continue volunteering as adults. Here is a small sampling of add-water-and- stir ideas that you can do with your kids to make giving back easy and fun! 

Buy your next birthday present…from Ten Thousand Villages.  Your purchase helps thousands of artisans in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East who use the income for food, shelter, and medical supplies.

Brighten someone’s day…by sending them a free e-card with an uplifting message from the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation.

Have a movie night…that features an inspiring film that shows the power of giving back such as Akeelah and the Bee, Rudy, Dreamer, The Miracle Worker, Charlotte’s Web, and countless others.

Try out some of these ideas, and develop your own add-water-and-stir recipe for charitable giving.  And send us your ideas.  We’ll share them with our readers! 

© YesKidzCan!, 2010

Starting, September 19, www.Petfinder.com will host a Adopt-a-Less-Adoptable Pet Week to try and place thousands of animal that are often passed over because of their age, size, color, or other reasons.  Sadly, 43% of shelters and rescue groups say their listed pets have been homeless for one to two years.  So if your kids are angling for a pet, now may be the time to visit www.petfinder.com.  As they say, “the less obvious animals often have more love to give!”

When school starts up again, we focus on getting our kids ready.  What about our getting our teachers ready?  Every year, teachers in America spend hundreds of dollars out of their own pockets on school supplies for their classrooms.  Many classrooms are without the basic building blocks of learning including paper and pencils.  Treasures4Teachers  (T4T) is a phenomenal organization that enables teachers to obtain needed supplies but also receive professional development workshops that enhance classroom activities.

Here’s how it works:  teachers can become a member of T4T for only $35.  This gives them access to the T4T store and warehouse of supplies where they can fill a huge, reusable bag with all the materials they need for only $5. (On average, the retail value of the materials is $75!)  The organizations has available a wide variety of materials including craft supplies, containers, books, maps, small furniture, carpet samples, binders, writing materials, wood, wire, sponges, and so much more!

Here’s how you can help.  Donate items from their wish list.  When Treasures4Teachers receives plastic or cardboard tubes, they see the opportunity for teachers to create musical instruments, spectroscopes, rain sticks, light experiments, or time capsules!  Things you might consider throwing away could be unusual materials for class project or decorations!  Donated materials can be shipped to:  Treasure for Teachers, c/o Barbara Blalock, 16634 South 32^nd Place, Phoenix, AZ 85282.

You can also make a financial contribution.  $25 will buy 500 pencils.  $50 will buy 1600 crayons.  $100 will buy 22.500 sheets of filler paper! You can consider making a donation in honor of or in memory of someone you care about or for a special occasion.  Click charitable donations to see how you can donate by mail, phone, or online. 

Remember, in the eyes of creative educators and kids thirsty for learning, a paper bag isn’t just a paper bag!  It can become a puppet, a costume, or part of a science experiment!  Sort through items you have around the house with your kids and help teachers turn them into something magical this school year!

© YesKidzCan, 2010

As published in RoleMommy, September 2, 2010

A stuffed animal menagerie lives in my daughter’s room.   Animals of all species and shapes which are lovingly jammed inside a wooden trunk at the end of her bed.  Stuffed animals carry such significance for children – each with its own story and memory.  There’s the sad looking dog she won at a boardwalk game at the beach.  There’s the manatee her Miami-residing aunt sent her for a birthday present to remind her of Florida.  There’s the first animal her dad got her on the day she was born.  She sleeps with this raccoon every night.  And there is even the first stuffed animal I received as a child that I passed on to her because I couldn’t bear to give it away.  My father gave me – of all things – a llama which I creatively named, “Llama.” It stands one foot tall with orange-brown glass eyes, a tuft of white bangs, and a surprising noise maker in its chest. One push creates a startling bleating sound that sends any dog in the vicinity into a frenzy.  “Llama” is now very old.  Its legs are bowed and a few metal supports jut out here and there.  (Don’t worry, they are blunt and won’t hurt anybody.)  This one stuffed animal has followed me from childhood to college to my first apartment and now – to my daughter. 

So you can imagine my surprise when just the other day, my daughter announced that it was time to pass along a large selection of her stuffed animals to kids who needed them more than she did.  I have been trying to get her to do this for a while.  Not because I am a cruel mom, looking to break her spirit by separating her from her animals and all their furry memories.   She simply has so many of them from friends and relatives and birthday party favors that it seems – well – excessive.   I suggested that she divide the animals into three piles:

1) Definite giveaways;

2) Definite keepers; and

3) Undecided.

To my shock, she quickly created a huge pile of giveaways, a modest pile of keepers, and an understandable amount of undecided’s.   A quick conversation about each of the “undecided’s” helped put them in their rightful spot. 

Our next decision was to research where to donate the critters.  (A decent number of groups exist that take stuffed animals.  However, it important to note that many organizations request only new ones.)

We got online together and found two groups that my daughter liked that take pre-loved animals:

Project Smile:  This group provides police officers with gently used stuffed animals for them to give to children who have experienced tragedy or trauma.

Loving Hugs:   This group sends stuffed animals to children living in war zones, refugee camps, orphanages, and hospitals or medical facilities around the world.

You do have to cover shipping costs if the group you choose does not have a drop-off location near you.  (Loving Hugs helps you save on shipping costs by accessing their UPS account and taking advantage of any volume rate reduction that may apply.)

With our donation game plan in place, my daughter had one more idea.  Since she was donating so many of her animals, she was wondering if she could buy one new animal for herself that had meaning.  Every parent will have a different response to this, I’m sure.  I decided that this was okay by me.  Donating her animals was her idea in the first place.  She happily selected a treasure trove of creatures to make others happy.  And stuffed animals – whether old or new — carry a lot of sentimentality.  Just ask “Llama” which – you will be relieved to know — remains safely in its rightful home – in the trunk at the end of my daughter’s bed.