The Kindness Olympics

Happy Random Acts of Kindness Week. We've been on such a kindness kick at school this year that it almost feels like we're training for the Kindness Olympics, as if there were such a thing. We kicked off the year by collecting quarters so that our Student Council leaders could buy some fleece to cut and tie these beautiful blankets to help warm up our friends who are struggling with homelessness. We collected enough quarters to buy the fleece for fifty blankets . . .

and fill Mr. Whitlock's van for distribution in Houston.

We had just finished with the fleece when we received this incredible donation of blankets from our friends at Warm Up, America!, knit, crocheted, and tied as housewarming gifts for those friends who are just now returning home after Hurricane Harvey displaced them six months ago.

What a delight it has been to distribute this generous gift. Even as I was finding homes for these gorgeous throws, we were busy in Art class creating our Kindness Rocks. Just this past week, this one came in from a school in Racine, Wisconsin.

At the end of January, we welcomed the Kids For Peace Kindness Team . . .

to build our Peace Garden and dedicate our Peaceful Hearts Playground. We are so grateful to GameTime, Hasbro, Kind Coins contributors, and our PTO for our new state-of-the-art play space.

Our #kindcoins spokesperson, Jet Stream Jax, has gone on location several times these past few weeks to video chat from the playground with schools who donated to help make our dream play space a reality. It's super fun to watch him interact with other kindness crusaders from coast to coast.

Before we could even start breaking in our new Challenge Course, it was time to launch our annual Sweets for Our Soldiers campaign. We made these colorful, creative Valentines for our troops in Counseling Classes . . .

and sent out this request for baked goods.

And did our school family ever respond in kind; just look at this table filled with kindness from our kitchens waiting for our student leaders to put together our priority mail packages.

Thirty six of these care packages are heading to the ten deployed servicemen that we adopted at the time of this post.

And for fun, we cut up our PSA posters like this one . . .

and put them in the boxes to give the soldiers a puzzle to build.

We are so grateful to the Friendswood Rotary for their

$500 donation to help defray the cost of postage.

You may think that we're done donating for a while, but just this week I saw some adorable PSA posters being hung in our halls, announcing a Pet Supply drive to help our shelters who are still housing Hurricane Harvey rescue animals.

See what I mean about the Kindness Olympics? Just imagine if the world were as determined, dedicated, and driven to warm our world with kindness as our olympic athletes are to win a medal for their countries.