10 Ways to Teach Your Kids To Give For Christmas“Tis’ the season to get!”Teach your kids to give for Christmas in new, different ways that make the holidays more meaningful. What if this year you taught your children a new holiday tradition that was about giving not getting? What if we changed it all up and instead of the season to get for kids we make it the season to give.This holiday season our family wanted a Christmas about giving. We created an Advent Calendar for Daily Giving from December 1 through to December 25. Here are our first 10 Daily Gives to inspire you to give this holiday season!10 Ways to Give for the HolidaysFood for Good: Purchase a pre-made grocery bag full of food. Save-On Foods made this easy for us while grocery shopping. $10 bought a bag full of food that will be distributed by Harvest Project.Sock Drive: $18 bought us 20 pairs of socks to donate towards my sons Grade 4 sock drive. 353 pairs of socks were donated from Ridgeview Elementary families to those in need. .Clothing Donation: We all have stuff we no longer need at home. We collected all the clothing items we no longer needed and donated them to our local Salvation Army.#TreatsforToys: This is a giving activity that everyone loves. Rice Krispy Canada is challenging Canadians to make their favourite holiday shape with the loved Rice Krispy Square recipe. Just post a picture of your treat and they donate a new toy to a child for Christmas. We made 4 shapes which equals 4 toys donated!Christmas Crackers: This is a favourite give. It takes the best of Halloween and turns it into Christmas. My children donate 80% of their cherished Halloween candy to a school project. At Christmas, they turn all the donated candy it into holiday Christmas Crackers for families. Families donated the candy, toilette paper roles, wrapping and the entire school spends an afternoon volunteering their time to make hundreds of these special treats for local families.Toy Drive: If you are our holiday shopping most malls make it easy to give. Purchasing one extra new unwrapped and donate it with your children. Its a wonderful way to remind our children that there are so many kids don’t get presents under the tree on Christmas Day. Thanks to Park Royal Shopping Center for making it easy to give by donating a new toy to the North Shore Family Services.Free Rice Game: Giving can be challenging on those days when the kids are home sick from school. We love this daily give as it keeps your kid’s minds stimulated when not at school and gives them purpose. The Free Rice Game is an easy multiple choice word game. With every correct answer, you donated 10 grains of rice to The World Food Programme. We answered 30 questions and 300 grains of rice to hungry people around the world.Let It Snow: We may live in Canada but in Vancouver we rarely get snow at home. You must drive to the Mountains. This week we were blessed with an unusual dump of snow. The kids were thrilled and so excited to shovel. It was the fun give of the day as we helped our neighbours by shoveling their driveways.Brotherly Love: Candy canes in our family are the ultimate holiday treat. They only come once a year so each one is a special gift. Today my eldest son Nic did a daily give that changed his younger brother’s world. Each had been given a candy cane by the youngest, Sterling. Within 30 seconds of tasting that yummy treat Tyler, the middle of 3, promptly dropped his candy cane and it shattered all over the floor. The screams began and Nic stepped in and gave his candy cane to Tyler. That’s what we call true brotherly love.Recycling: It is everyone’s responsibility to take care of our planet. The City of West Vancouver and The West Vancouver School District make it easy to teach children to recycle. We have taken recycling at home one step further. Every 2 weeks we head to our local Recycling Depot to return all our bottles and cans for cash. That money goes into our Giving Jar towards a donation we will make at the end of each year to a charity we will choose as a family. It costs us nothing and teaches our boys a big lesson on giving to our planet and raising money to donate to those in need.It’s never too late to give and we want to hear your stories! You can leave a comment or email us at [email protected]Share your stories on Twitter or Facebook. Tag us @365give or #365give. Share Article: