Service & Sacrifice

As you may know, I have a soft spot in my heart for the military.

Every year, we support a group of men and women who are deployed and serving on active duty away from home through our Supplies for Our Soldiers project. A few times we've actually Skyped with the soldiers as they open our care packages and thank-you notes. Sometimes, the troops send pictures.

We love knowing that our gratitude will ease their burden ... 

if only for a bit.

Sometimes we get notes back, like this one from early January:

Greetings from Afghanistan!

I just got your package of goodies today. I'm glad we decided to check mail today (even though it usually only comes in on Thursdays). Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do that for me. It truly brought tears to my eyes to know that your whole class participated in putting together the package. The letters that they wrote remind me of my own daughter's writing (she's 8 and in 3rd grade).  

I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas and blessed New Year! Again, thank you so much for your package of goodies.  I will be sure to share them with the rest of my team.

First, this soldier is a mom. On deployment. In Afghanistan. Can you imagine? Second, it's humbling that she's thanking us, for something so small, when her gift to us is ginormous! Then, we find out that she's got a daughter in the third grade. Quite common, I'm sure, but so hard for me to fathom. That's why I can't help but get jazzed when there's a new resource 
for Children of Military Families.

Because it's their service and sacrifice

that often goes unnoticed and unrecognized.

Here's what some of the children on the ProfessorChild DVD had to say as they expressed their thoughts back at home while their parent is away. 

Service and sacrifice never sounded so real ...
watch for yourself ... prepare to feel their stories.

Honestly and quite candidly, these precious children share their feelings, give advice to peers as well as to parents, tell us what they'd do if they had a magic wand, and describe themselves and their experience.

And it's a powerful 46 minutes! 

Share it with the military kids on your campus to validate their experience and with the others to elevate empathy.

There's even a free workbook download available {here}. 

Need a military-themed book or two to go with this DVD?

Sometimes We Were Brave by Pat Brisson
Hero Mom by Melinda Hardin
Night Catch by Brenda Ehrmantraut
The Year of the Jungle by Suzanne Collins
America's White Table by Margo Theis Raven


On a related note, congratulations to our friends at ProfessorChild for their award-winning Children & Grief DVD. Click {here} to see the American Library Association's prestigious list of 2014 Notable Children's Videos.