Teaching Kids to Set the Table – FREE PRINTABLE!

One goal of mine last week was to begin teaching my kids to set the table.  Now, seeing as I have a teenager, a pre-teen, an elementary-schooler, and a preschooler, you may be wondering what took me so long.  Well, I don't know how things work at your house, but over here it doesn't matter how many times I tell them--they always forget!  So this time I found the perfect solution. I LOVE this printable placemat that I found at Parents Magazine website.  They usually have a lot of good resources for activities, crafts, printables, and plain old parenting advice.…

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The First Sign of Summer…

...is signing up for our local library system's summer reading program and our local park program! We signed up today, and Rapunzel was so excited! If you have a local library who offers a summer program (many of them do), I'd strongly recommend signing your kids up.  Our library system rewards the children based on the number of minutes read.  I enjoy this method better than number of books read only because it's more fair to children of different ages.  Either way, it's a great way to keep the kids' learning throughout the summer.  It's a known fact that many children…

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Returning for Summer

I have 89 emails in my inbox. I should read them.  Or sort them.  Or something. I should be working.  Or keeping my kids from drowning our potted plants in their pool water. But I'm not. I haven't been here for about 3 months.  Three days after my last post, my oldest biological daughter's father passed away unexpectedly, and I didn't know how to deal with telling the world.  A wild mix of emotions was involved, including past hurts, what ifs, anger, some depression, grief.  You name it, I felt it.  Then dealing with his family--that was a whole issue…

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Too Early to Think About Summer? I Don’t Think So…

A few weeks ago, I received an email from our church conference about upcoming summer church camps. I was so excited, and I couldn't wait to plan! More recently, we have been receiving snippets from the school and hearing about other camps in the area. Believe it or not, it's time to plan for summer camps. Camps book quickly, so in order to ensure you're spot, you need to sign up early. Not to mention early-bird discounts. I have a friend who is taking her family on one of the Dreamland Safari Tours, a camping style holiday in the Utah…

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Rewarding Kids for Good Grades (Minus the Big Bucks)

Every three months during the school year, we come to this point where the kids bring home this piece of paper with cryptic marks on it hoping that maybe they'll get some reward for all of their hard work during the school year. And every time this happens, I sigh because I can't reward my kids with money. Let's face it: the economy stinks, and if you're used to rewarding your kids with money for good grades, you might just be breaking the bank nowadays. That's how it is. But this summer I came up with a reward system for…

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