A Day in the Life (of Your Family)

What do I do all day? Let me tell you!

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Supplies: Paper Pencil Camera, optional

Benefits:

• Give an hourly update of life at your house! • This is a literary snapshot of the reality of your life.

Directions:

1. Choose one day you want to write—try to keep that day free of too many outside activities. 2. Keep a notebook handy (in your hands!). 3. Document what your family does all day. Break it down by hours. 4. Write down conversations, routines, activities, and thoughts that you have as the day progresses. 5. Skip an hour if you need to, or document the morning of one day, and an afternoon of the next. 6. Don’t forget to add your observations and reactions to things (how cute the kids were as they put on the puppet show, etc.) 7. Make it REAL! Don’t sugar coat your life, write about the spilled milk and the wrestling matches. 8. After your days of writing, take time to type everything up. Add anything that you forgot.

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Hints for Parents and Teachers:

*** When I do this, I usually take 2 or 3 days. (I am really trying to capture the essence of our life, not specifically what happened on a particular day.) It is difficult to catch everything—and your hand starts to cramp from writing non-stop!

I break it down by hours and put 1 hour in an envelope marked with the hour on the outside. I try to include funny sayings, what the kids do, their hobbies, interests, and events that keep us on the run. I only do this once a year, usually in January. It has been a Valentine gift to my husband and our grandparents. Start early, it takes time to observe and write, then it takes time to type everything up.

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Do It Again!

We have added snapshots of our life. Have older writers keep track of their own day. Track a character in a book’s day. Use your imagination to break down hour by hour and describe their day.

Summer Honors Program

Our online classes ended the first part of May as well as our home school co-op. My kids were thrilled thinking they were done for the year! I explained that we still had lots of learning to do before we officially ended the second week in June with all of their public schooled friends.

A few days later at breakfast devotional  I introduced the Brimhall University Honor Society. I gave them each a copy to hang in their cubby and to check things off. It is based in BYU's Honors Program, that our daughter is pursuing with gusto!

It was a little ambitious but I thought, if we only do half of it, it will give us something to shoot for!

Today is June 15th, our last day, and I am pleased to say we've done it all! Each of the topics kept us moving forward in exposing us to great things, reading and asking questions.

Some highlights:

  • Going to the play: Meet Mark Twain, where we came face to face with Ryan Clemens, an actual relative to Samuel Clemens! He gave a wonderful one man show and we all came home and each picked up a book by Mark Twain (without my asking or assigning!).
  • For Science we watched a documentary called "Tales from the Hive." Then went to a friend and he opened up his hive for us to see. It was great and our 17 year old son even put on a bee suit to get a closer look!
  • We read classic books and discussed them in our American lit class with a wonderful mentor.
  • We put together a money class and learned all about finances. The kids did projects and planned out our summer vacation and learned how important compound interest is - especially when you are earning it rather than paying it!
  • We loved watching the entire "Lord of the Rings" trilogy plus "The Hobbit", and even watched "Gone With the Wind". We gained a new perspective as we watched a Japanese film, in Japanese!
  • We worked on personal progress and painted our daughters room, after having painter's tape up for six months awaiting painted stripes.

We had to search for some things but others were easy. End of the year recitals filled our requirements for music. Service hours were easy too; helping someone move, volunteering at the library, typing up girls camp schedules.

We talked about the activities as a family and dad was included in many of our adventures! One of our favorites, visiting a local art gallery and visiting with the artist for 45 minutes!

This was a great way to spend our last month of school, even though we had lots of other things going on as well!

It was a wonderful way to spend time with each other and could easily be done over the summer!

Enjoy!

A Blast From the Past - Family Time Line

Originally published in the Sentinel on 6 June 2005...

I love timelines. Looking at timelines can broaden our perspective, help us see new relationships between events and give us a sense of order. Making a family timeline is a great family project. Here is one way:

Start by brainstorming events that have happened in your lifetime. On a piece of paper, list births, marriages, graduations, family vacations, moves, accidents, or dramatic events that have happened in your lifetime. (You may want to browse through your scrapbooks to help jog your memory!)

Take pieces of paper and tape them together horizontally. Draw a long black line through the middle. Determine your furthest date back in time, and start there. Decide how many years you want to cover, and mark the years proportionately. (JJ's timeline of his life so far was 8 pages, and he is only 8).

Write the events and where the event happened on your timeline in the appropriate year. Post your timeline, because you will remember more events. You will also find that some years were busier than others! This is your "Sloppy Copy" so don't worry if it gets a little messy, or if you have to add another piece of paper in the middle of your timeline.

Photos can be added to help highlight some of the events on your timeline.

After you have added all your events in the correct time and place - you can make your final copy.

Variations:

We made a timeline of my husband's great-grandmother, highlighting the service she gave over the last century. We added when she was born, was married, and died, and also when she gave birth to all 13 children. We then added military service, marriages and births of children and grandchildren, etc.

For fun, we added a timeline of world events, church events, and famous inventions. The timeline was 44 feet long and covered a whole side of a room! (We also noted that the washing machine was not invented until her 13 children were out of diapers!) It was very fun to put life into perspective and see what a single family could accomplish in a century's time!

Christmas Around the World

Every year we celebrate "Christmas Around the World" by having three or four families over for a fun evening of food and sharing. We've enjoyed wonderful foods from around the world: a French Yule Log, Swedish Meatballs, Korean Kimchi, and

We invite each family to choose a country and learn all about it: fun facts, geography, famous people, animals that live there and especially what they do to celebrate Christmas. Children can make a poster to share or present something that they learned to the group.

French Crepes to name a few! We send out our invitations early for everyone has time to prepare.

Christmas-Around-the-World
Christmas-Around-the-World

We invite each family to decorate a small Christmas tree with ornaments that tell about their country and to bring a traditional food. We display all the trees on the tables with the food.

During the evening we enjoy a wonderful meal and each family gets to present their country to all the rest. We also enjoy singing Christmas carols and have even tried to sing them in different languages! A fun night for all!

Bookstore Mom

We were at the Tattered Cover Bookstore, in Cherry Creek, Colorado. It is a three story bookstore that sits on 1/2 a block. It was crowded, even for as big as it was...

That is when I spotted a mother and child sitting in the Children's area. You could tell it was a weekly outing for the two.  There they were snuggled up with a book.  They were not rushing around madly looking at the wide array of children’s books that filled a whole floor.  We were in awe at the thousands of books that filled just the children’s area.  But, there the two sat content with just reading 1 book.  Oh, yes, there was a small stack next to them.  Books that they would read and a small pile of books they had gone through.  They didn’t look like they were going to buy any of them, but they were thoroughly enjoying the ones they held at the moment.

The mother knew the store.  She had been there many times.  They knew where the chapter books were, where the new arrivals were, and they knew where their favorites sat on the shelves.  Many times, they were content.

I, on the other hand, was frantic.  Where to begin!  How in the world could we see everything today?  There were so many areas that I wanted to explore.  The kids just seemed to slow me down.  They wanted to stop and read, I was determined to cover acreage…I wanted to see what was behind every new nook and cranny.  It was like a candy store—colors, flavors, etc.  How in the world could I decide where to begin or be happy just looking at a few books?  I wanted to see all of the displays, fan through the fiction, rummage through the references, search through the sale items, and hunt through the histories.

This bookstore was like going to a museum.  You might as well buy the family membership because you will not see everything in one day.  Take your time to really enjoy where you are.  You will never be able to teach all of the curriculum that you bought and is gathering dust on the bookshelf.  Similarly, you will never be able to learn all there is to learn about Ancient Greece.  When your child’s interest begins to wane, take the hint!  And, smile that you had a taste, learned something, and then, let it go.  Promise yourself that you will come back another time, when you have more time to spend, or your child is older and ready for a larger in-depth meal.

Fun Reading Ideas:

1. Read to them. JJ and I just finished reading Hatchet by Paulsen. Perfect for 10 year old boys--it's about a 13 year old boy who crashes in an airplane and must survive alone in the Canadian Wilderness. Try to make reading time a special time-not just torture! (For one book JJ and I played tag with the book. We read together and I always stopped at an exciting part then left the book. Often I would find him reading it. Then I would try and catch up by taking the book from his room...)

2. Let them see you reading. Example just can't be over stated! Make the time to read. (this is frustrating for me - I want to keep doing things!) When the kids see their father read it is 10 times more powerful. (This was an actual study!)

3. Talk about things you've read at the dinner table. We give book commercials - advertising works for TV, why not for reading - tell about a favorite book or article you read.

4. Kids go through phases! Each of our kids has gone through a comic book phase, where all they wanted to read was Garfield and Calvin and Hobbs books. I am enduring this phase but keep reading them books I want them to hear.

5. Get the whole family involved - have aunts, uncles and grandparents tell what they've been reading or ask them to encourage your kids to read. Is there someone in the ward or neighborhood your kids respect and admire - ask about what he or she likes to read.

6. Go to the library or bookstores. Our kids get Christmas money from grandparents - and we always use it for books.

7. Do activities that remind you of the book. After reading Hatchet, we watched Swiss Family Robinson. We also tried making a fire without matches. We talked about getting our son a pocketknife for Christmas, etc.

8. Use thought-provoking questions to make kids think more about what you are reading. Avoid the worksheet approach. This can pretty much kill any enthusiasm over reading (coming from an elementary teacher, I should know!)

9. Books on CD. We listen all the time. One of our favorites: Peter and the Star Catchers. - its very well read and a great story!

10. Tumble Books - kind of for the younger set, but we all stop and listen when they start reading a book. Most libraries have a subscription.

11. Brain Pop (ok, it's not a reading site, but it is a favorite of ours.

12. Buy them a bedside lamp. You’d be amazed at the reading that happens at night. They can turn off their own light.

13. Buy informative magazines for kids. There is a lot of them out there. Go to the library and check them out.

Don't expect your kids to jump right into reading. They sometimes don't do things just to spite you or irritate you. Just keep reading - they will follow suit!

The most important thing about reading for us is to learn to love it. Books can take you anywhere and teach you things, but only if you open them up! Encourage that love of reading and you've accomplished more than you know.

Need a great place to find good books? Read "The Read Aloud Handbook" by Jim Trelease (I think that this should be required reading for every parent. It lists great books to read aloud in the back.) Ask the librarian, or friends. Also, Book Adventure has a great way to look up books. Have your child look up the kind of books they like.

Require or Not... ?

Ishel was putting the book, Jo’s Boys by Louisa May Alcott back on the bookshelf.I asked, “How did you like it? Was it good?”

“Oh yes, very good.”

“What did you like about it.”

She told me a few things. I probed more, because I had not read the book… "who were the characters?" "Was there one that mirrored you—you found yourself in that person?" She went on telling me about certain characters and what she liked and identified with.

“Remember the papers you are working on about what makes a good mother for your personal progress? What did you learn about being a good mother from Jo?”

Thoughtfully she responded, As she was speaking, I stood up and found a yellow pad of paper and started talking notes—just jotting down main ideas that she was telling me.

Her face scrunched up. “Oh no, Mom, it’s Saturday! I don’t want to get sucked into a project!”

I immediately stopped, and said, “You’re lucky! I am already doing a project! We can talk about this another day!”

Require or Not?

I want my kids to do more than just read good books. I want them to think about them. I want them to take notes in the margins, ask questions, apply them to their life. I guess in short, I want them to walk around in their shoes for a while—see things differently, experience a new perspective and glean everything they can from that book.

Ok, ok, I don’t want them to analyze a book to death. That would destroy the fun and love of reading quickly! One of my favorite books I read as a child was A Tree for Peter by Kate Seredy. I read it so often that the library let me pay for and keep the book because I had checked it out so many times. I never analyzed it. I never had to write in the margins or think about character development. I just loved it and took strength from its characters and the insurmountable courage that Peter showed. I just knew that I could count on the friend that I had made in that book, by reading it over and over again.

It was not until years later, in college, for a Children’s Literature class that I wrote about it, analyzed it. It brought tears to my eyes to write about what this short children’s book had meant to me as an awkward 14 year old in a new state and making changes to grow up. My typed paper was stained with tears in a few spots and only the professor read how that book had sustained me through hard growing up years.

I guess that I will not require that my children mark up their books, unless they choose to. Who knows what they are getting out of the book. I will still ask questions and probe deeper thought, but making kids analyze their books I’ll put on the shelf for another day. Something more significant may show up later in their life—I just hope that they share it with me!

Dr. Seuss Party!

 

Writing is a Blast

We celebrate  reading in March to commemorate Dr. Seuss's birthday. Every year we throw a  party with our home school friends and others... this year you are invited to  throw a party of your own! Here is how we do it:

Pick the date.

Dr. Seuss  was born on March 2nd and was a great contributor to young children's success  in reading.  The books are fun and the  illustrations are fabulous! Our party is not always on the 2nd, but is in the  month of March.

The Cat in the HatInvite people EARLY. Send out a  red and white striped invitation and ask people to do and bring a couple of  things:

2. Each child is required to share with the group.1. It's a potluck, so bring a Dr. Seuss inspired food (green  eggs and ham always show up) or a food based on your favorite book (biscuits  from Little House on the Prairie, bananas from Curious George, etc.)

  • Elementary  aged children tell about their favorite book.
  • Middle  and High School students write and tell about their favorite author.

3. Each child needs to bring "A Shelf for Myself". 4. Please bring gently used books for the Book Swap.

Before the Party Ask parents  to go through their bookshelves and donate books they no longer want. We ask  around the neighborhood to gather books, too. Set up a  long table for the kids to place their "A Shelf for Myself" boxes. Set up the  dining area for the pot luck snacks. The GrintchSet up the room where all will share their favorite books. Hide a Dr.  Seuss's Grinch (or other character)  in your house in plain sight... give a prize for anyone who finds it. At the Party Welcome  everyone at the door in costume. You can have book covers hanging on the wall, a  "Cat in the Hat" hat making station, name tags,  "name that famous Dr. Seuss character"  game, or there are tons of fun ideas to do online. Party  Itinerary

  • guests  arrive.
  • have  them put food, and "A Shelf for Myself" in the appropriate place.  Invite one or 2 parents to set up the Book Swap.
  • "Guess  the Dr. Seuss Character" game.
  • Tell  them the Grinch is hiding around the house, to find him--but don't tell the  others.
  • Right  before the presentations, hand out paper and pencils so kids can write down  book titles they would like to read from the presentations and from the book  shelves.
  • Book  Presentations.
  • Invite  all to have snacks and browse through the "A Shelf for Myself" area.
  • Book  Swap. (We have the kids line up youngest to oldest and they each get to pick 1  book the first time through. Depending on how many books you have we just have  them keep going through until the books are gone. One year a friend was moving  and donated seven boxes of books! Everyone went home with an armload and a BIG  smile!).

 

A bookshelf for myselfThis is a  fun way to continue encouraging reading and we always love to throw a party!  The kids can have some fun dressing up and sharing. Our kids always come home  with a list of new books to read! Success!

"A Shelf For  Myself" Kids love to  have their "own" books. Each of the kids have their own bookshelf in  their room where special books are kept. We have a family library in the school  room and hallway, but the bookshelf in their room is just for them. When we have  our Dr. Seuss party in March, we invite all the young kids to bring "A  Shelf for Myself" made from a paper box. Simply take a box and cut off all  but one flap. Tip it over and you have a shelf! (The extra flap is a cover for  the box when it is time to transport.) We encourage all the kids to decorate  their shelf with paper then choose some of their favorite books to put on their  shelf. It is fun to see which titles they choose--which books have made a  difference to them!