Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Never Too Young to Be Polite


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As I've mentioned before, I absolutely love my local Re-Use-It network. (Previously known as Freecycle...but our moderators jumped ship. Long story.) A good portion of my crafting materials have come from generous ladies in my area - bags of ricrac, stacks of vintage fabric, and sacks full of tulle have all found their way into my home.

As I prepare to relocate across the country, I am doing my best to de-stash and simplify. When I get my daily e-mails from the network, I look very carefully at all of the "Wanted" notes. If any of them match anything in my craft room...chances are, I'll drop them a note. Many of the requests are on behalf of children, just budding into their creativity. I love that what I rounded up (for free) can now be redistributed to young people who are in need of copious amounts of (free!) materials to experiment on.

This past week, a grandmother put out a request for any sort of craft materials. Her (very creative) grandchildren had recently moved into town, and she wanted enough materials on hand to keep them occupied for the majority of the summer. I contacted her, and put together several sacks of things I thought young children might enjoy working with.

I was tickled pink when they arrived. Grandma was such a sweet and gracious woman. As they approached the door, her grandson put on his best Polite Face and handed me the card that you see above.

To: Aunt LoLo
From: The one you helped


(inside) 
Thank you for everything you have given me and I'm so happy I don't know how to say.....


(yarn on right)


The sweet words were accompanied by pictures of candles, a boy making a candle, and a ball of yarn that was unraveling to spell out the words "Thank you."

I was so impressed with this young man, and his (beautiful) and sweet gesture!

5 comments:

Kiy said...

Great post, and too true! We started Emi on please and thank you from the start. One of her first signs was thank you. She still uses that more than the words - which is darling as the way she does it, it looks like she's blowing a kiss. It gets GREAT reactions from folks. :) I tell her ALL the time when she remembers her please and/or thank you that there's nothing sweeter than a child with nice manners - and I *firmly* believe that. While many folks teach their kids that please is the magic word, I teach mine that thank you is. Thank you is a POWERFUL word, when truly meant.

Fantastic post!! And very impressed with grandma for teaching/helping with this too!

Cheers,
Kiy

Myrnie said...

What a sweetheart, someone taught him well!

Alison said...

How wonderful that he was thankful for the gift of re-gifting. That is a lesson that many young and old could stand to learn

Catherine Peart said...

Wow, that is exactly how I hope my children will be.

Su said...

That is so sweet! Such a creative little boy.
I love my local freecycle or should I say, freestore - they've jumped ship too. Just last week, I was extremely happy to unload drywall and lumber, and the person who too it was really happy to take it.