Looking for some service ideas during the season to help your kids feel the true reason for the season? Join us and check out these 30+ ways to serve with your family!

During the holidays we always make an extra effort to serve

December and November are always one of my months of the year because we really focus on gratitude and service ideas.

Every year, we try hard to get the kids involved in service ideas and projects, and over the past few years, we’ve done Secret Santa for kids in need, donated our old toys, visited nursing homes, and sang Christmas carols to them, and much more.

It’s so important to me to raise boys who are kind, and getting them involved in serving from a young age is an amazing way to instill kindness into them.

Try these 30+ service ideas with your family

Now that we have the cozy part down, it’s time to be kind and serve. We turned to you guys and asked for your best service ideas with your family this season. These are more than thirty of our favorites:

1. Make a frozen dinner and deliver it to someone in need
2. Tie fleece blankets and donate them to your local children’s hospital
3. Make travel-sized hygiene/essential kits (socks, toothpaste, water, deodorant, granola bar) and pass out to homeless as you drive around running errands
4. Visit a retirement or nursing home and sing songs to the residents
5. Visit a shelter or soup kitchen and serve there for the afternoon.
6. Volunteer together to clean up a beach or park. Make it fun by rewarding the person who picks up the grossest item.
7. Participate in Operation Shoebox to put together a box for a child in need
8. Make a list of people your family can pray for
9. Draw pictures and send them to Grandma and Grandpa
10. Make a plate of treats and doorbell ditch them to a friend or neighbor
11. Make handmade cards and deliver them to the elderly or widows in your area
12. Put flags on veteran headstones in a cemetery on Veteran’s Day
13. Rake your neighbor’s leaves
14. Give each child a set amount of money ($5 or $10) and have them choose one item at the store to donate
15. Ask your child’s teacher what they need for the classroom and then donate some of those items
16. Cut out paper hearts. Have your children perform acts of service around the house and leave a heart where they served
17. Bring donuts to the local firemen at the fire station
18. Make activity kits for the children in your local children’s hospital
19. Smile at everyone you see that day
20. Visit the library and have one of your older children volunteer to read to younger children at the library (get the librarian’s permission first!)
21. Take dog treats to a local animal shelter and feed and play with the dogs!
22. Volunteer to set out your neighbor’s trash cans, and then return them after the trash has been collected
23. Make cards for the service people in your area — mailman, trash men, firefighters, policemen, etc.
24. Volunteer at a Ronald McDonald House  — there are opportunities for all ages
25. Give each of your children a dollar, and then visit the dollar store. Then have each of them tape the dollar somewhere around the store.
26. Pay it forward by paying for the car behind you in the drive thru, or paying for someone’s table at a restaurant.
27. Take a walk around your neighborhood and pick up trash
28. Doorbell ditch treats or flowers or a note on a friend or neighbor’s doorstep
29. Choose a random “Service Day,” and spend the entire day looking for people and ways to serve
30. Deliver donuts to your local police or fire station
31. Clean out their old toys and donate them to the preschool your child attended
32. Make a challenge to give 5 compliments that day

There are so many ways to serve — tell us how you’re serving this season!

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