10 Easy Service Projects for Schools

This year I am looking forward to getting involved in my son’s new school, and helping to organize some service projects for his class and/or clubs to take on.

Here are 10 ideas of easy service projects for schools, which I brainstormed to start thinking about what we might do:

1. Make cards to give to a home for the elderly.  This could fit well into an art project or poetry writing assignment.

2. Have a can drive to collect food for your local food bank.  Great for adding into a math lesson, learning about grocery shopping and budgeting.

3. Collect books for a school in another country.  If a student is going on a vacation abroad, they may have a suitcase to spare.  Find a school that needs books and collect a suitcase full.  And prepare a lesson on the country and culture when the student returns home!

4. Take baked goods to a local police/fire station.  Learning about different jobs in the community?  Add some appreciation into the unit, as well.

5. Make sure the school has a recycling system and, if not, raise awareness and funds to get one in place.  Add up the trash each student uses and create graphs to share with the school community about how much garbage is created each day by individuals, families, classrooms, and the school.  Older kids could write letters and a proposal for getting the needed recycling bins.

6. Sponsor an animal at the zoo by holding a class yard sale or raffle.  This one fits great into learning about animals or a field trip to the zoo.

7. Plant trees, start a school garden, or volunteer in a community garden.  Kids love to learn about where their food came from.  Help them see the process first hand and find out how they can support nature in their community.

8. Donate household or baby items to refugees through the local refugee organization.  Ask students whose families recently moved to your country to share a bit about their culture.  Create some of their traditional food or celebrate a cultural holiday in class.

9. Take clothes to the local women’s shelter.  Violence prevention can always be made age appropriate.  Do some role plays about handling problems without violence… and invite guest speakers (like the police or social workers) to offer a presentation to the class about how to protect themselves and others.

10.  Collect toys for children in need.  This is a popular one to do around the holiday season, but many donation services will take toy donations year round.  You may like to work this into a writing assignment by having each child take a photo with the toy they are donating, and write a story about a memory they have with the toy.  Invite them to imagine what fun another child can have with their toy, also.

Do you think one of these projects may work in your child’s classroom or in another group they are part of, such as a sports team or club?  Let me know which one you are going to try!  Feel free to bring up the ideas with your child’s teacher, or you may like to print out the list and take it in to the school so the staff can look over the ideas.