Guerilla Goodness Quaker Style

This week is Random Acts of Kindness week. Greenville Friends, the small Quaker meeting in Greenville, South Carolina we attend, has First Day School on the first Sunday of the month. It was my month to organize a lesson and I was very excited to have February because I had been reading about an activity a fellow mom blogger, Patience Sogaldo, does. She has her own blog, Kindness Girl, that I follow regularly. Along with her sisters, she also contributes to the blog Supersisters at PBS Parents(a great website I might add). She does a thing called "Guerrilla Goodness" which was my inspiration for First Day School. Get on over to her blog and read all about the history of Guerrilla Goodness. Maybe it'll inspire you too!

We set out to do our own little Guerrilla Goodness project in honor of Random Acts of Kindness Week. I talked a little about sneaky guerrilla warfare but that as Quakers we honor the Friends' testimony of peace. Kids love the idea of being sneaky! Hey, let's face it, who doesn't like being sneaky every now and then? So I told them we were going to practice sneaky guerrilla goodness. I caught 'em...their curiosity was peaked, along with the bribe of juice boxes and snacks later, of course. It was a joy to see the personalities of all the children, even the shy ones, emerge as they began to dive into all the crafty goodness. Seeing wonderfully loving sayings written by a child's hand makes a sneaky love note even better don't you think? I gave them some examples of sayings the kids could write but they began to come up with their own like:

• Love Your Sluf (translation: Love yourself)
• Think good thoughts
• The day is sunny, so are you!
• A three year old thinks you are cool!
  

As they were creating their notes they began to talk of who they would give them too. The list grew and grew. Some of them even decided to continue the project when they got home. We put of few of the notes on some of the cars in the parking lot and gave some to some of the adult Friends in the meeting for worship. The rest that they made they took home with them to practice their own random acts of kindness. I also made up a little "goodness bag" that had a few chocolate kisses, a heart sucker and two guerrilla goodness type cards printed from a website dedicated to anonymous kindness called Help Others. You can go there and print your own. It's lots of fun and does a body good!



So I'd love to hear what your plans are for this week of Random Acts of Kindness! Leave a comment telling me...that alone is a random act of kindness delivered to moi!