Ideas for the Classroom

Teachers can set the stage in the environment for explorations and discoveries. For instance, in order to raise issues of hunger and sustainable resources, teachers might choose to change the dramatic play center, introduce new books or videos, visit a farm, or bring in a chick. Teachers can introduce the concept of homelessness by exploring the idea of home.

• Investigate what a community is and which helpers a community needs.

• Explore homes, the importance of homes to children and families, and how to help homeless children who don’t have homes.

• Investigate what helpers do. Provide tools that helpers may use as props in the dramatic play area.

• Investigate what helpers do when disaster strikes.

• Develop a project in which children can thank the helpers.

• Take field trips to work areas and learn about helpers.

• Become helpers – throughout the center and the community – through activities like clean-up campaigns.

• Set up a food bank in dramatic play.

• Go on a field trip to a local food bank or homeless shelter.

• Children begin to problem-solve about how to help homeless people and decide to implement a “penny drive” to raise money.

• Have children make vegetable soup and bake bread or cookies to
  bring to a homeless shelter.

Whatever your service project, help your children understand the reason for it. Even very young children can imagine what it would be like to need a house or be hungry, and fairy tales or fables can help them understand. The goal is not only to provide assistance for folks who need it, but also to provide a fun and meaningful experience for our children, teachers and parents as they volunteer together.