With so much to be done for the world and so little time in which to do it, most adults can get stuck just thinking about all of the possibilities to help and not accomplish anything at all. Yet, starting a child off on a life of community service and service learning can be even more daunting.

My wife and I decided to expose my daughter's preschool class to the concept of service learning by using Ann McGovern's "The Lady in the Box," which teaches young children and early readers an understanding of empathizing with others who may be less fortunate than they are. The Lady in the Box explores how children can channel their desire to give into very active ways.

The story focuses on Lizzie and Ben as they "adopt" a homeless woman who sleeps in a cardboard box outside of their neighborhood deli. The two children begin giving the woman canned goods, blankets, and even get their mother involved as the old woman is shooed away from her warm heating vent.

According to Jean Piaget, the noted child psychologist, children aged 4, 5, and 6, although developmentally self-absorbed, can begin the process of empathizing with others by reading about it in books and then doing something practical.

In the dead of winter, my wife Jaime and I decided to introduce service learning by first reading the book and then putting together baggies of trail mix for a local rescue mission and homeless shelter in our city.

Looking at children from ages 4 to 6, some basic assumptions come into play. First, that they need adults to begin to get most all of their needs met. Children can't survive all that effectively without an adult caring for them in ways that will make them feel safe. Second, children have a hard time trying to make connections between different things. Reading a story about a homeless person may make all homeless people into the person that they heard or read about in the story. Keeping some of the concepts simple for the preschool aged children is the best bet.

Both Piaget's developmental stages and Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs" come into play in this lesson. By teaching children about the concept of homelessness via a book read in class, Piaget's preoperational stage, homelessness can be equated with actively doing something for the homeless. The Lady in the Box also teaches children that people must get their basic needs met to fully get some of their advanced needs satisfied. The lady in the box must be taken care of before she can get back on her feet again.

The homeless woman is able to connect more fully with the youngest child in the book, Ben, at a soup kitchen where his mother takes him and his sister to volunteer. Coupling the lesson with the active approach of the trail mix bags will allow students to see concretely that the homeless have real needs.

Some key questions that we considered were: Who are homeless people? What can I do to help homeless people? Can reading a book offer up practical advice on how to deal with people humanely? How can adults help children who want to help?

The materials that we used were simple. As stated before, Ann McGovern's book, "The Lady in the Box," is the key ingredient in this lesson. We also asked parents the week before to bring in the makings for the trail mix.

We broke the lesson into two days over two weeks. On the first day, we had an opening meeting where the students were called over to the reading rug. We later asked them what they knew about some of the key concepts, like homelessness, hunger, helping people in need, etc. Next, I read the book as dramatically as I could, stopping for questions along the way.

The following week I re-read the story dramatically again without the all of the discussion we had the first time, while Jaime organized the trail mix ingredients, having students working together at their stations to put together the individual items that they brought in, like almonds, walnuts, peanuts, dried fruits, and M & Ms, into a manageable mix. We delivered the trail mix to the shelter at the end of the day.

True service learning ends with some kind of reflection, which can take the form of having the children dictate their own story of additional ways that they can make the world a better place or how it feels to give to others knowing that giving makes other people happy.

The lesson was a huge success in many ways because the teachers, students, and parents were very excited by helping out. Just providing the opportunity to help out in indirect or direct ways can be a part of every preschoolers training.

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Credits: Brian Thomas