Works of Mercy with Kids: A Vacation Box for the Homebound

Generally I don't like to share things like doing works of mercy because the point is to love others and care for them, not tell everyone about it.  But I have found it a little challenging to find great ways to bring the works of mercy to life in age appropriate ways for my kids, so I'm sharing an idea that we came up with that might be something others would be interested in doing with their young kids as well.  

If you are familiar with the Works of Mercy, there are both spiritual and corporal works.  This vacation box idea is something that helps us practice two corporal works of mercy: 1. Visit the sick and 2. Visit the imprisoned as well as one of the spiritual works of mercy: 1. Comforting the sorrowful.  In our family, we don't live close to any relatives especially the ones who are getting a little older.  We can't visit them regularly, but we wanted to find a way to bring them joy and show them how much we love and care about them, especially since some of them are sick and homebound and perhaps a bit lonely at times.  And some of them are caregivers for those who are sick and homebound which means that they too are often unable to take much time for themselves.  

For our first vacation box, we chose to send a wonderful older couple who is very dear to us to Hawaii.  Here's how we did that in our own special way.  

This is our Hawaiian vacation box, created with love by 3 sweet little gals, ages 3, 5, and 7 with a tiny bit of help from their littlest sister (18 months).  

We decided Hawaii would be a fun place that the couple would love to visit if they could, but since they can't, we would bring it to them as best we could.  We brainstormed ideas for pictures that they could hang up around them to make it look like they were in Hawaii.  As you can see from the top picture, that included palm trees, tropical flowers, pineapples, a dolphin swimming, lots of blue ocean, and a bright sunshine.  Kayla drew all the pictures and she and her sisters colored them in.  

Even sweet Sophie joined in for an ocean picture, scribbling blue crayon on a paper that one of her sister's later finished.  

We also thought the couple might need new swim suits for their trip, so Kayla designed some.  She really got into it.  I simply drew her an outline

We gathered some other fun items to send along with their sweet artwork that would help to create the ambiance of visiting the Hawaiian islands: some tropical flower hair clips, Hawaiian chocolate covered macadamia nuts and chocolate with mango, Mai Tai mix (not pictured), leis, a bunch of little drink umbrellas, and a coconut bra.  

I added this little surprise for the girls.  I made a little Hawaiian postcard and put it in the box, self-addressed so that the recipients of our box could send the girls a little message "from Hawaii" because everyone knows when you go on a tropical vacation you send postcards to people you love.  

So there you have it.  

We are working on ideas for another vacation box for someone special.  Where should we send her?