November is a great month to help others. Especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, many people are hungry and need food to eat. I work with City Harvest to do a can drive at my school. If you decide to do a can drive at home or school, here are some helpful hints for how to get kids excited and involved in the process. 

1. Tell your children about City Harvest (or another organization you work with) and about what they do. Understanding a can drive helps children feel connected to the process.  Explain to them what type of people the organization helps and why they help those people.  You can talk about people that have experienced disaster like Hurricane Sandy, are old and home bound, or are homeless with no place to live.

2. Have your children write letters to friends and family to tell them about the can drive you are doing. You can talk about what to say in the letters to let people know why you are collecting cans and non-perishable food.  You can also have your children make signs around your house or school to remind people.

3. You can make a bar graph to incorporate math and to collect data. Ours looked like this.

4. Depending on your child’s counting abilities, you can have your child….

              – count by 1′s

              – bundle cans/boxes into groups of 10′s, 5′s, etc. and have them count like that

              – answer questions about the graph (who collected the most, least, how many more did we collect then them?)

             - look at cans and estimate how many. Then count and see how close your estimation was.

             -  sort the different cans(soups, pastas, peanut butter, etc.) and then graph that on your chart

5. You can build with the cans as you collect. Visit the Canstruction Site. It is UNBELIEVABLE!!

6. You can reflect with your children about how it feels to help others, and how others might feel to get the help.

Have you ever done a can drive at home or participated in one at your child’s school?  How did it go?  Please let us know!