Faith Curriculum Library: Tapestry of Faith: Creating Home: A Program on Developing a Sense of Home Grounded in Faith for Grades K-1

Faith In Action: Homeless People’s Needs - Short-Term

Activity time: 45 minutes

Materials for Activity

  • Personal care items donated for homeless people
  • Locking plastic bags

Preparation for Activity

  • Contact a local agency that serves homeless adults or families and offer to donate a number of personal care kits. Find out what kinds of donations the agency would like.
  • Invite parents, other congregants, and/or a local hotel to donate new (unused) personal care items such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap packets, wash cloths, small tissue packages, and bottles of shampoo or skin lotion.
  • Purchase locking plastic bags large enough to hold the items each child will combine to make a personal care kit for a homeless person.

Description of Activity

Children will internalize the chalice story by participating in a Faith in Action project to help homeless people, who are refugees in our own country. This special population needs care, concern, and practical help to find the everyday comforts of home without a permanent place to live.

Arrange for the children to make personal care kits to distribute at an agency that serves homeless adults or families. Children can bring new, unused tooth brushes, soap packets, and other items to include in the bags. Add these to items you have secured from local hotels’ housekeeping departments.

Children can sort the donated items – toothpaste, shampoo, etc. – and then package a variety of items into each plastic bag. You can have children make an assembly line and pass each bag around, or allow each child to carry a bag around the circle to select items for one bag at a time.

You may like to have the children draw pictures to include in the bags. Adults should deliver the personal care bags to the homeless agency.