Hooty and the Unselfish

In Joshua and Clara's class, there's a thing where each weekend a child is chosen to take home Hooty, who is a small stuffed animal owl, along with a notebook.  Over the weekend you are supposed to help your child do something nice or caring with Hooty, to symbolize that Jesus cared for others, and then take a picture of it and write about it in the notebook, and then send it all back to school.  We noticed this morning at church that reStart, a local homeless shelter that tries to move the people they help toward independence and self-sufficiency, had a space where they were collecting hats, underwear, gloves, and socks (HUGS), so we decided to have Clara and Hooty take part in that.  After I dropped Joshua off at AWANA, I took Clara to Walmart to buy something.  I briefly had her stand outside without her coat on (I quickly put it back on), and we talked about how it was sad that some girls want to go play outside when it's cold, but they don't have hats or gloves, so they can't.  And that we were going to go buy a hat and gloves for them.  She latched onto the story and personified it as one particular girl that would be the recipient.  So we found a set of hat and gloves, and she was fully on board with this plan: "We have to buy a hat and gloves so the girl can go outside!"

Later we took the items to the church, and on the way Clara asked if the girl would be at the church to get the hat and gloves, and I had to tell her that we would take them to the church, and the church would then take them to the girl (explaining that it was actually a charity was a little more complicated than it needed to be at this point).  We dropped off the items, and talked again about how it's important to help others, and how Jesus helped others and that we should do the same.  She seemed to understand and really seemed to take joy in helping that unnamed girl get some warm clothes, so I think the Hooty project was a success.