The Cadbury Little Generosity Shop ….. teaching children to share

I’m sure by now you’ve seen the amazing Little Generosity Shop pop ups that Cadbury have set up.

The concept of these purple play houses is to collect your pre-loved books, toys and games to be distributed to nationwide orphanages. Bringing some joy to children who are not regularly spoilt.

So, I sat down with Hamish yesterday and we went through his toy box.

At almost 3 he understood we were going to “share” his toys with other children.

For me it’s important to use the correct terminology that he would understand.

In the car and again at the mall, I repeated to him that we would be taking the toys to the chocolate house to share with the other children and that we were going to leave the toys there.

He only asked me if I was leaving him there to play and if I was coming back later?

I explained I wasn’t leaving him as we were going to go give the toys to the Cadbury toy elves.

We took quite a few things that Hamish has outgrown, a bag of books, a shopper of individual plastic toys, some games, a construction kit and a few learning toys. It’s amazing how much we’ve accumulated since my last clean out.

Cadbury have a system to reward the child with an equivalent of chocolate. A chocolate for every toy donated but a maximum of 5 chocolates in total.

The process is really sweet. Your child hands in the toy which is recorded.

They then go and choose one of the many delicious chocolates as a reward for doing good, learning to share and thinking of others.

Once they have their chocolate they can sit at the tables and decorate them.

I noticed older children were also offered the option to write notes to the children who will recieve their Preloved toys.

Hamish loved this and was so distracted by the chocolates and the beautifully decorated Cadbury house, he never once asked for the toys.

They also have a Generous Acts of Kindness wall, where you are encouraged to open a door and choose a random acts of kindness to perform.

The two teens absolutely adored this. What a stunning idea.

I really love this inicitive. I walked away knowing that in a fun, rewarding way I was able to teach my toddler to share, give back and be kind.

Thank you Cadbury.

The little Generosity Shop is at Canal Walk until 5 August 2019.

To learn more about this incitive read here