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Friday, September 11, 2015

Teaching Kids Community Responsibility {PRINTABLE}


This post has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #1Million4Edu #CollectiveBias

One of the concepts that is frequently not taught in traditional schools is community responsibility. So that job falls on the shoulders of parents. I use our homeschool lesson time to teach my own children. From volunteering at a non-profit to reading about the difference one person can make to saving pennies or collecting labels, I use a variety of ways to help my children learn to do social good and see it as their responsibility. We recycle to help not only our community, but our planet, too. And we regularly donate gently used clothing and other items to our local mission/thrift store.

When I was asked to share with you about the Grand Stand for Schools initiative and its Labels for Education® program, I agreed. Why? Because this is a great way to earn money for your child's school and so I want to be sure you know all about it! In fact, Labels for Education is giving away $10,000 to 100(!) schools across the country.

Participation is easy. All families have to do is clip and save UPCs and Beverage/Sauce Caps from specific products, then turn them into their local school coordinator. You can earn:
"educational merchandise, such as computers, software, sports equipment, musical instruments, library books and even a minivan."
Schools, libraries and, yes, even homeschool associations (yay!) are eligible to participate. You can find out if your school or library is participating by clicking here.

I was thinking about how to make this program fun for the kids and decided a little friendly competition was in order. So I created these Label Collection Record Charts. They're available in English and Spanish. And so you can put the teacher's name across the top and hang the charts on your classroom door (or wherever you want to publicly display them). Once a week or as new labels and caps come in, you can count them up and total the number on the chart.


So my kids became even more interested in doing this when we were browsing around our local Target and discovered this:



And, of course, that was all she wrote for my Star Wars-loving kids.

Some of our other favorite eligible items for collection include school supplies!



If your school or library hasn't signed up yet, but wants to participate, they can do so here.

And guess what? If the majority of the parents at your school are Spanish-speaking families, it's no problem because Labels for Education even has a site en espaƱol. :)

To find out if you use any of the participating products, just take a look here: http://www.labelsforeducation.com/Earn-Points/Participating-Products. I'd love to hear your favorite!