Family Builder Group Journal Month 3
I just love all of the thinking and proactive planning that has been going into our family these last few months. This month we are focusing on creating an inspiring environment. I’m so inspired!
Last month we worked on making a plan to build relationships. We started to schedule time to have couple meetings and one on ones with the kids. It’s really helped us in so many ways to bond and know each other as people with unique talents, interests and needs.
Here are the notes from last couple meeting….
Dec 5-2010 Am and Jer Prepare
3 Objectives
1. Get out of the box with others.
2. Read Classics
3. Create an Inspiring Environment.
To accomplish this we need to…
A) Have a weekly with each child and as a couple discussing:
1. Ways to improve relationship with each child
2. Issues THEY may have.
3. Strategic learning opportunities ( focusing on personal interests and character, read “Book of Virtues)
B) Structure time for lots of reading:
1. Go to Library often.
2. Listen to books on tape.
3. Read “The Read Aloud Handbook”.
4. Follow good book lists (Core Series, Project Seel, Honey for a child’s Heart, TJEd).
5. Schedule reading into daily routine, including meal times and during chores (scripture snack).
6. Make books a part of family culture and tradition. (Holidays, book fairy).
7. Model reading and discuss personal books.
C) Make home and family a loving, fun and encouraging place:
1. Plan weekly (Thursday nights)
2. Provide exposure to things that kids might have interest in. (i.e. field trips monthly)
3. Talk about interest during weekly meeting
4. Maintain spread sheets to journal interests and mark progress and to help with planning.
5. Wait for the right time, plan for the right time, don’t impose it.
6. Make things fun!
7. Inspire not Require!
As you can see we ended up changing our objectives from when we started. I was inspired by another member of the group, I hope she won’t mind if we copy. I loved how precise and easy her objectives are to remember and I felt that they summed up what I was trying to say perfectly!
To maintain and monitor our objectives we came up with several spread sheets to go over at our different meetings and agenda’s to govern them.
As for coming up with a three month inspire plan I’m still unsure. I’ve been trying to inspire myself by looking for examples of where we have inspired instead of required. I thought of 2 examples that kind of happed on accident. The first one happened last week. Actually we had been working on this for about 2 months. I wanted to “inspire” the kids to memorize some poetry. I heard someone say that they had their kids memorize poems to recite at a rest home. Sounded great to me so I told my kids “I would be happy to bring any child who had memorized at least 6 poems for a special trip to the rest home to be able to share what they had learned. Of course mom had to learn 6 too. We used the poems in each child’s “Core Series” books and read them in the mornings during school and before bed. We found quick and easy ones at first, a few of them made us laugh until our sides hurt! The older kids then moved on to some harder ones just to see if they could do it. Before we knew it we were looking for excuses to recite our poems. Everyone learned their 6 poems and we went to the rest home to share. The kids did such a great job, the whole experience brought tears to my eyes. We sang songs and gave lots of hugs. We learned so much more then poetry. The best part of all is that the kids are asking when we can do it again.
The second one involved our cleaning day. Every Monday at our house is cleaning day and it has not been inspiring at all. I know that it’s my fault. I’ve had the wrong mindset. I should have the goal of family unity, building relationships and teaching to work, but instead my goal has been to get stuff done. I recognize this and just have a hard time to remember it. To help myself remember this, last week I put on a very colorful apron with lots of pockets and filled each pocket with special treats. I put on some upbeat music and told the kids that they could pick a treat out of a pocket when I saw them working. They loved it, and I think we both felt more of a connection. I was walking around looking for the good instead of looking for the bad.
As for our three month Inspire plan, I think I would like to work on inspiring my son Nathan to read more on his own. Here’s what we came up with…
December
· Pick out his first chapter book for me to read just to him (snuggled in my bed 3 times per week for at least 20min)
· Talk to him about his interests during meeting.
· Model reading, talk to him about how thankful I am that I can read so that I can enjoy my books.
January
· Scheduled a tour of the Library with the children’s Librarian
· Find books of interest for him and wrap them up and give them to him pretending to be a “Bookaneer” (Shauna Dunn idea)
· Play more active games involving reading practice (ex. BYU’s project Seel and Sing spell read and write etc
February
· Make it a special privilege to be able to earn time to stay up later to read books.
· Find some special Valintines books to read every year (Nathan loves holiday’s and family
traditions)
· Invite friends over to have a “Sherlock Holmes” party where we solve our own mystery and talk about the book.
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