Preparing for National Hunger Action Month

September is National Hunger Action Month. This year I thought I would get a head start. I am joining the amazing group of bloggers again called Moms Fighting Hunger. We are joining with No Kid Hungry to try to help combat childhood hunger in our local areas. Last year I challenged you my readers to join me in gathering food for local food pantries. Again I will extend this invitation to you. Last year I also helped plan a story time food drive at my local library, but since I got started late, it was in October. We used the theme of Stone Soup for it. This year I am starting earlier. I passed on Jen's from The Good Long Road idea of a food drive themed around The Very Hungry Caterpillar back in the spring, and we discussed doing a story time theme, but it hasn't happened. We are now thinking of doing some combination with the library's food drive around Thanksgiving. 

This year I wanted to do something bigger too. So I decided to gather emails for many local libraries and preschools and offer them the story time themes of Stone Soup and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I gathered craft ideas and story telling ideas for both on Pintetest boards: The Very Hungry Caterpillar Board and Stone Soup Board. I also put together outlines for both story times with options of additional books, story telling props and crafts and activities. (You can click picture or caption to get the free downloads.)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Set

I also did a generic flyer to advertise the story time with spots to fill in each places information (in red). The flyer is in Word, so it would be easy to change.  Here is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. A big thank you to Vickie from Mrs. Plant's Press and Chelsey from Buggy and Buddy for allowing me to use their pictures on my outline.

Stone Soup Set

For Stone Soup, I used pictures from our story time last year on the outline and including a tutorial on making the story stones we used. Then I made a generic flyer again for this story time theme. Finally I made a set of memory cards to go with Stone Soup. The ones I printed, I forgot to center the page so you could print double, but I have fixed it in the printable.

I figured it would be a fun activity and also an easy take-home activity. I have not found as much on Stone Soup as I did The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so I wanted to add some more to it.

I then sent these as attachments to the local libraries and preschools. Above is the e-mail I sent out. I am sharing all of these in hopes that others will want to use them. Either to send out to local libraries in your area or to plan your own story time food drive. 

The next thing we are doing for Hunger Action Month includes our long talked about butterfly party. Hazel made up a Butterfly party song she sang at the library yesterday while playing her ukulele. Sorry I couldn't figure out how to turn the picture with the software it was in. We sent out our invitation to the party asking people to bring fruit for a fruit salad and a can of fruit or vegetable for the local food pantry.

I included the video in the invitation and somehow my clip art did not show up. Oh, well. Hazel is so excited for it. I will post more as we get towards it.

So that is what we are doing for Hunger Action Month. Will you join us and get the word out to help our hungry children? After all, one in five American children are from a family who struggles to get enough food on the table. In a country as great as the United States, I think we can do better for our children.