Issue: Seniors
Meals On Wheels
Volunteering for “Meals On Wheels” to deliver prepared dinners to homebound seniors is a great
opportunity for your family to connect with seniors in your community. Your family can volunteer to
deliver the meals and make hand-decorated placemats and greeting cards to be delivered with the meal.
Another idea is to make a Toiletry Gift Bag to add to their meal tray.
Here’s Your Project:
Deliver meals and hand-decorated placemats to homebound seniors
in your community.
Supply List:
• Construction paper
• Markers, stickers, scissors, glue
• Clear contact paper or a laminating machine
• Small, decorative bags and assorted sample
size toiletries
How To Do It!
1 Connect with your local Meals On Wheels organization
or an appropriate social services agency and volunteer
to help deliver Meals On Wheels to homebound seniors.
2
Ne
Inte
r
arl estin
se y si g Fa
c
n
x
the iors mil t:
fac lion
hu
t
h
ng
r
e
er eat d
o
in
20 f
07
Make placemats out of 11” x 14” construction paper to
accompany the delivered meals. Decorate the placemats with
cheerful drawings or stickers. Use clear contact paper on both
sides to make the placemat waterproof, or run it through a laminating
machine. Make a greeting card with a positive, cheerful message. Add the card
and holiday decorations or a jar of flowers to the meal tray along with the placemat.
Optional Project Ideas:
• Assemble a Toiletry Gift Bag which includes hotel size shampoo, soap, lotion, toothpaste, a notepad, a pen, a small flashlight and batteries or a magnifying glass.
•
Include a homemade greeting card with a positive, cheerful message. Ask your local Meals On Wheels if they participate in the WALOP initiative. WALOP stands for “We All Love Our Pets.” Meals On Wheels recognizes the importance of a pet to homebound seniors and the difficulty some seniors have feeding their pets. If your local Meals On Wheels participates in WALOP, consider purchasing pet food or asking other families and local merchants for donations to send with your delivery
Preflection:
Before your volunteer project, be clear about what the goals and expectations are. Also talk about why
you are doing a service project. These are often new concepts for young children. Talk it over a couple
times. Here are questions to guide your discussion:
1. Who are we helping?
2. Why are we helping them?
3. How are we helping them?
4. What are we most excited about?
5. What might be tough or challenging about our project?
6. What are everyone’s jobs during the project? What do we each have to do?
Reflection:
After your volunteer project, it is important to reflect on the experience. You can use the reflection
questions to guide discussion or do the Whip Around reflection activity:
Reflection Questions
1. How did our project help people?
2. What did our family learn?
3. How did our feelings about disaster relief change?
4. What worked well about our project?
5. What can we do better next time?
6. What is our next service project?
Whip Around Ball Toss:
Have your family sit or stand in a circle facing each other. One person will have a ball to toss or roll to
someone else in the circle. Each person will have a chance to complete a statement about the project.
The person with the ball makes a statement, and then says the name of the person they are tossing the
ball to. The next person completes the sentence in their own way and so on. When the ball has gone
around once, start a new round with a new statement. Try these statements:
“This project made me happy because ________________________________________________.”
“I didn’t know I was good at _________________________________________________________.”
“Next time we volunteer, I’d like to help _______________________________________________.”
Resources:
Suggested Reading
The Goat Lady by Jane Bregoli
All the houses in town are well-kept and freshly painted except the “Goat Lady’s” house. Her home is
falling apart and her yard is full of farm animals including goats. Read how the community comes to
embrace the “Goat Lady” after a family befriends her.
Down Home at Miss Dessa’s by Bettye Stroud
Set in the 1940’s, this book tells the story of two sisters who help take care of Miss Dessa after she
hurts her foot. After awhile, the sisters start getting back just as much as they put in and end up
making a true friend.
Internet Resources
Meals On Wheels National Association —Information and ways to help seniors facing hunger:
www.mowaa.org
AARP—Games to share with seniors and information about their community:
games.aarp.org