4 Ways to Prepare To Volunteer with Your Toddler

Volunteering with my family has always been something I was eager to do, even before I had a kid. Volunteering and serving has always been a way that I feel connected to God, connected to my community, and really connected to who I want to be. I wanted to make sure that my kid grew up knowing just how important it is to serve other people. So when our church announced their annual Go Week (a week of service projects that help our local community), I jumped at the chance to sign us up for a project.

Since my son was 2.5 years old, he was definitely old enough to help out, I just needed to be specific about what activity we chose. There are a few things that I took into consideration when planning to volunteer with a toddler. So if you are looking to serve with your toddler, but not sure where to begin, here are the 4 ways to prepare.

1.Pre-teach

Take the time before you do the service project to explain to your kid why they are doing it and what it means. Like I mentioned, I want my kid to know that it’s important to serve other people, so I wanted to make sure he knew what we were doing and why. I spent the week before the project talking about it and explaining to him what we were going to do and why. Some of the ways I did this was through telling him that God has called us to help other people, and then telling him that what we were going to be doing was helping other people just like God has called us to do. I talked about a few things that other people have done to serve us and connected those experiences to what we will be able to do for others. For example, “do you remember when your uncle brought you that book that you love?”, “how did you feel when you got that book?”, “what we will be doing will also make other people happy, just like you were happy when you got that book.”. So teach your kids ahead of time what they will be doing and why to make it a meaningful experience.

2.Pick a project they can do

When considering what project to do, you have to look at what your kid is able to do at their age. Our church had a bunch of different opportunities that included things like writing letters, street evangelism, packing snack bags, and much more. We chose to do the snack bag packing service project. We would go to church and pack snacks into bags that other service projects would use to hand out to those they were helping. This was totally a job that a 2.5 year old could do. They formed an assembly line and everyone walked down the line with a ziplock bag, putting one of each snack in as they went. Then at the end of the line, we closed the bag, put it in a bin, and went back to start again. After one or two times down the line teaching him what to do, he had it down. I moved the snacks to where he could reach and I closed the bag at the end, but otherwise he did it all himself. 

3.Pick the right time length

Toddlers don’t have the longest attention span, so consider that when thinking of the volunteer project you're going to choose. Maybe my son could have done the street evangelism, because he loves talking to people, but that would have been well over 2 hours plus car rides there and back, which would have been too long for him. The project we chose was exactly 1 hour long. He packed snack bags for 45 minutes and then took a supervisory snack break for the last 15 minutes. It was perfect. 

4.Get the family involved

Kids learn through modeling so get your whole family involved! My husband and I did this service project with our son, but we were also able to have my brother and his girlfriend join in. It was so nice to get to do it together as a family and for my son to see everyone pitching in to help others. 

Some might think that their toddler is too young to volunteer, but I disagree. Serving others and your community with a toddler is definitely possible and is totally worth it. My son had a blast while we were serving and he talked about it for days afterward too.