Anybody Can Serve: Building Big Hearts With Sparkler

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught people that all people can be great because “anybody can serve.” For young children, service doesn’t start with grand gestures — it begins with simple, everyday moments of helping, sharing, noticing others, and practicing kindness.

On the Sparkler mobile app, families can find manageable AND meaningful activities that they can do with their young children to turn everyday moments into powerful learning experiences, supporting children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development. 

Many Sparkler activities invite families to explore what it means to be a helper in age-appropriate, joyful ways.

In Let’s Help, children walk outside with a caregiver and look for small ways to help — picking up trash, holding a door, or helping a neighbor carry bags. These experiences build social-emotional skills like empathy and self-awareness while helping children understand that their actions matter. When adults ask, “How do you feel when you help others?” children begin to connect service with positive emotions and a sense of belonging.

Activities like Helpers United and Thank a Helper help children notice and appreciate the people who make their communities work: teachers, sanitation workers, crossing guards, delivery drivers, and neighbors. Creating a collage of helpers or thanking someone in real life strengthens children’s language skills, memory, and social understanding. It also builds respect for others and helps children see themselves as part of a larger community where everyone plays an important role.

Sparkler also encourages families to reflect and plan together. In How to Help and Who Needs It?, children brainstorm ways to help at home or in the community — cleaning up toys, donating clothes, or making a thank-you card—and even draw a “helper plan” to hang up as a reminder. These activities support early executive function skills like planning, decision-making, and follow-through, while reinforcing values of generosity and responsibility.

Creative and playful activities such as Kindness Chain Reaction and Friendship Cookie show children how kindness and sharing can grow. Making a paper chain for each kind act or dividing a giant cookie so everyone gets a piece introduces early math concepts like counting and fairness, while also teaching cooperation and compassion. Children learn that small actions—sharing a toy or offering a compliment—can have a big impact.

Finally, activities like Say It Loud and the Little Helpers, Big Impact invite children to find their voices and see themselves as changemakers. Chanting rhymes about standing up for what’s right or listening to stories of kids helping their communities builds confidence, language skills, and a sense of agency.

These Sparkler activities — and many others — help families show children that service isn’t something we wait to do when we’re older. It’s something we practice every day — at home, on the sidewalk, and in our neighborhoods.

By nurturing empathy, kindness, and community awareness early on, families are helping children grow into caring, capable people who know that anybody, no matter how small, can serve.