All four of Rausch’s children are in Thornapple Kellogg’s Virtual School where teachers are promoting February as Kindness Month. A calendar for the month gives suggestions for random acts of kindness students could easily do. One suggestion is to build “pop up” snowmen to brighten someone’s day. Susan’s children Jacob Crowder, Louis, Ava and Elle Rausch took the challenge to heart to try and make others smile.
“It was fun and it felt good,” said Jacob, an eighth grader and the oldest of the four children. “It kind of made me think about a family friend we have who we haven’t been able to see for a while. I hope this made people smile,” he said.
Louis, a second grader, said he had a lot of fun playing in the snow. “I think it made people smile. Mostly it made me smile the rest of the day,” he said.
Susan said kindness is something they practice regularly in their home in different ways and she is glad the teachers wanted to help promote kindness as well. “It was just the perfect day to do it,” she said. “The sun was shining and there was good packing snow. It didn’t take long at all to make the snowmen. For family members in retirement centers it’s been very difficult being so isolated. At least they could watch from the window and see the snowmen and the fun the kids were having.”
Fifth-grader Ava said she loved being able to spread a little joy and happiness in such a simple way. “During COVID you can’t really see anybody. It’s kind of hard. We just thought this would be a good way to spread a little bit of joy to other people,” said the fifth grader.
Elle is in kindergarten and was thrilled to be playing outside in the sunshine and snow and it didn’t matter to her whether it was in her own yard or in someone else’s. “It was fun and it was the second time I built a snowman,” she said explaining she also built snowmen in their neighbor’s yard.
Susan said when they were done building an employee came out of Carveth Village and expressed how much the residents loved watching the snowball fights and the kids playing and building the snowmen and how grateful they were to be able to watch.
“It was just so nice to hear that and to know you did something that made other people happy,” she said. “The kids and I talked about what we had done and why. I wanted them to understand exactly why we did that and what it meant to the people at Carveth.”
Jacob said random acts of kindness shouldn’t just happen during a pandemic or in a special month, but all the time. He’s also shown other acts of kindness by shoveling his neighbor’s driveway. “It just helps build better friendships,” he said. “And it makes you feel good, too.”
Susan said it’s also a good reminder that random acts of kindness don’t have to be grandiose or costly. “They can be so simple and something anyone can do - something as simple as building a snowman,” she said. “At the end of the day, I think the kids and I were just as uplifted as everyone at Carveth.”