Teaching Kids to Give Back This Holiday Season with CWIST

During the holidays, we see so much promotion about the latest toys and video games and it’s easy to get caught up in the commercial side of the season.  With so much emphasis being placed on receiving gifts and making wish lists this time of year, our kids especially can forget the importance and value of giving to those less fortunate.  To help parents and their kids get back into the giving spirit for the holidays, CWIST has launched their Kids CWIST For Kids initiative.

What is CWIST?  CWIST is a new incentive-based digital platform where parents and educators can share ideas, motivate kids to learn and teach valuable life lessons.  With CWIST, parents assign a learning challenge (“a cwist”) that the child will love doing because it’s both interactive and fun.  There are two types of CWISTs.  The first type of CWISTs are ready-made challenges that can be drawn from an online library of age-appropriate educational online games, such as math challenges.  The second type of CWISTs are those where parents can create their own challenge for their kids to complete.  This might be a chore, such as filling up two bags of leaves from the year, or learning activities, like completing a reading assignment.

Once your child completes these CWISTs, he or she can earn parent-designated rewards such as a bowl of his or her favorite ice cream an extra hour of television, or that cell phone upgrade they’ve been yearning for.  These CWIST challenges help teach kids the importance of hard work in achieving their goals.

For an additional holiday twist, The Kids CWIST for Kids charitable initiative connects a parent and their children to a child in need.  Parents assign their children CWISTs to complete, but instead of their child receiving the reward, a gift will be donated to a child whose family can’t afford holiday parents.  In addition, CWIST will also be donating the first $1,000 in toys earned by children for completing CWISTs to family-supporting charities.  How awesome is that??!!!

With 6 kids, we will be able to grant at least 6 wishes, which is awesome!  The first one we selected was a 6 year old boy who likes football.  The profiles of the children we could grant the wishes for came from the Lighthouse Shelter, Sarah’s House and the Homeless Education Program for AAC Schools in MD.  For our CWIST, we chose “Teaching the TRUE Meaning of Christmas.”  For this activity, we needed The Polar Express (book or movie), The Giving Book by Ellen Sabin, the Internet, an adult to help out and a desire to help others.  For the gift for our child, we chose an Table Air Hockey Game.  There are so many children to help and gifts still yet to give.

I encourage you to check out the CWIST program and sign up with your child to make this Christmas a merry one for a child with a wish.

Have you signed up?  What gift did you choose for your assigned child?
What task did you choose to complete?

I participated in a campaign on behalf of Mom Central Consulting for CWIST. I received a promotional item as a thank you for participating.