Faith In Action Long Term: Toy and Book Drive - Long Term (30 minutes)
Materials for Activity
Large cardboard boxes
Roll of plain paper, scissors, and tape
- Markers, crayons, paint and paintbrushes, and other items for decorating collection boxes
Preparation for Activity
Inform participants’ families and other members of the congregation about the toy and book drive through the newsletter, email lists, announcements during worship, and flyers.If a visitor is coming to talk about the agency or organization you have chosen to work with, include the day, date, and time of the visit in your congregational announcements of the toy and book drive.
Arrange with congregational leaders to place collection boxes for toys and books at one or more locations in your congregational meeting space.
Publicize the toy and book drive in your local
community.
Invite local businesses to place a toy and book
collection
box in their stores or offices.
Optional: Arrange the date and time for a field trip, if the agency or organization will allow you to bring the children to deliver the toys and books they collect. Prepare the standard permission slip used by your religious education program to distribute to the children’s parents.
Description of Activity
If you introduced Faith in Action: Toy and Book Drive in Session 9, in this session you may be hosting a visitor from the agency or organization that will receive the items the children collect. Whether or not a visitor is coming, the children can move the toy and book drive forward by making and decorating collection boxes.
Plan to gather for the visitor’s talk in a space that can also be used for decorating the collection boxes.
Make sure the visitor has a place to sit and is offered a drink or snack. Introduce the visitor and allow him/her to present about the agency or organization, the population it serves, and how it helps people. Children will want to know why other children their age are in need. Make sure this is addressed. Try to steer your visitor toward language that emphasizes similarities among children, rather than differences between givers and recipients of toys and books.
After the visitor’s talk, invite the children and others who are present to decorate the collection boxes. Cut lengths of plain paper to wrap around the sides of each box. Provide markers, crayons, and/or paint and paintbrushes.
Children and adult helpers may write “Donate Toys and Books” on the paper, or other words that suit your project. It is easier to write, draw, and paint on paper before it is secured to a cardboard box. When drawing and painting are complete (and paint is dry), secure the decorated paper to the boxes with tape.
Leave time for clean-up and solicit children and their families to help.
After this meeting, arrange with co-leaders and parent volunteers to distribute the collection boxes to the locations you have chosen in and outside of your congregational meeting space. Also make plans for picking up the boxes to end the toy and book drive. All boxes should be retrieved before the date you have scheduled to deliver your donations. Leave yourself some time to sort and pack up the donations before you, or you and the children, bring the items to the agency or organization.
Last updated on Friday, April 18, 2008.
