Family Day Party At Our Local Outdoor Rink
We had a super fun Family Day Party at our local outdoor rink – with approximately 250 people in attendance! We have the most amazing volunteer group of neighbours who set up and maintain the rink and who planned this awesome day. In addition to skating, there were horse drawn sleigh rides, fat bikes, crafts, music, and a bonfire at the party. The kids got to roast marshmallows over the bonfire! And the food … There were hotdogs, chips, and a table full of baked goods. There was coffee, hot chocolate and mulled cider. And we were asked to bring a donation of non perishable goods for the food bank, which were collected by Hansen – a local landscape company. So much awesomeness.
World-Changing Kids was tasked with two Acts of Kindness for the party – to complete a Kindness Painting and to get more signatures on our Kindness Petition.
Our Kindness Paintings always have the beautiful words “We Are All Flowers From The Same Garden” and show the world that we belong to each other. When we give our Kindness Painting to the recipient, we are telling our friends that we are happy that they are part of our community – that our community is a better place because they are in it. We would like to donate this Family Day Kindness Painting to a Mosque in our community. We would love some suggestions from our neighbours about which Mosque we should contact. Please let us know if you have any suggestions!
We prepped the Kindness Painting at home before the party so that each artist could add their own flower at the party.
When we got to the park, we set up in one of the rooms in our ice house and invited kids to come in and add a flower.
Jean Cloutier, Councillor for Alta Vista, stopped by and added a flower. He said that his kids would never believe that he painted, so we took a photo of him pointing to his flower as proof!
Then we had more awesome World-Changing Kids add a flower. Looking through all these photos is like watching the garden grow before your eyes.
While we were painting, we also asked our friends and neighbours to sign our Kindness Petition.
A bit of background on our Kindness Petition:
In order to have a concrete action we can take to show the world that we believe people from all religions, cultures and races are welcome in our communities and that we all belong to each other, we have created a Kindness Petition to be read in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. This petition calls on all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to stand up and speak out against all forms of hate and discrimination and to stand together in love and kindness. With our signatures, we will be adding power and strength to these words.
When we have a page filled up with signatures, we drop it off at the office of John Fraser, MPP for Ottawa South, so that he can bring it to be read at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. We sent our first batch of signed pages with John to be read on Tuesday, February 21. John has said that he will have the petition read each Tuesday if we have more signed pages. Our goal is to get kindness mentioned at the beginning of one Session each week for the whole year! We think that setting an intention of kindness at the beginning of a Session of the Ontario Legislature each week will create positive change!
But we need your help to do this. We need you to download the Kindness Petition and get some signatures. Anyone and everyone can print out this petition and sign it. If you are a family of two, or four, or eight, you can print it out and have everyone in your family sign it. If you are a teacher, you can print it out and have your class sign it. If you are a principal, you can print it out and have your whole school sign it. If you are a leader of an extra-curricular group or program, like Girl Guides, Boy Scouts, hockey, baseball, dance, archery tag, etc., you can print it out and have the kids sign it. Then you can drop off or mail the signed pages to John Fraser’s office. For more information on this Kindness Petition, as well as instructions for downloading it for signatures, please click here.
Finally, we used our leftover paint to make our signs for the Multi-Faith Welcoming Committee at the Ottawa Airport, which was a Kindness Week event that happened the following day. Stay tuned for a post on this with more beautiful photos. It was a busy week for World-Changing Kids!
At World-Changing Kids, we believe that so many good things happen when you bring your community together. Children benefit immensely from knowing their neighbours, and having friendships with people of all ages – this gives them a strong foundation to grow up from. Knowing the other kids in your community makes it easier to head to the park and join in on whatever game is going – this helps build up a child’s confidence. Parents also have a chance to talk to other parents at community events and build stronger friendships too – and this helps in so many areas. Parenting is hard work and we shouldn’t have to do it alone. It really does take a village to raise a child – we need that village! If you know your neighbours, you can help each other out. You can take care of each others children. You can send over a nice meal if you know that a family is going through a bit of a hard time. You can pass hand me downs through a community – saving money and being friendly to the environment. I could go on and on ….
For 75 Acts of Kindness that you can do with your children to build a friendly community, while also helping your children strengthen their kindness, empathy and compassion muscles, check out our book “Plant a Garden of Kindness, A Child’s Guide to Filling a Year with Weekly Acts of Kindness”. You can find more information on our book at the “Our Book” tab above.