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Category: Kids
Friendship Day
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Friendship Day honors our friendships, new and old. Click here to learn more about this holiday. It is celebrated on the first Sunday in August.
Do you know a special friend who could use a little encouragement? Here are some gift ideas for them. Continue reading “Friendship Day”
Have You Bought Your School Supplies Yet?
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We’ve bought the majority of our school supplies for the upcoming year. I know from experience that this is something best done sooner rather than waiting to the last minute.
Not sure what to buy? Check out my post here with our Free Printable Back to school list. I’ll try to start planning for our next year’s school choices about midyear. This gives me plenty of time to research and make lists for supplies that we’ll need.
Not homeschooling? Check with your child’s school and/or teacher for supply list. Many times the local Walmart will have a handy checklist available when you walk in. Continue reading “Have You Bought Your School Supplies Yet?”
August Holidays
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I will try to update this list with some fun activities as well. Feel free to click the links to find out more about the origins and meanings behind these special days. I plan to incorporate a few of these into our normal homeschool routine to add a little fun and excitement to our days. I’ll update this page with ideas we’ve found as we go through the month. Have fun and maybe make up your own personal family holiday or tradition for the month!
This month is also known as:
- Admit You’re Happy Month
- Family Fun Month
- Dog Days of Summer – July 3 – August 11
- International Clown Week – always August 1-7
- National Catfish Month
- National Eye Exam Month
- National Golf Month
- Take the family to the local putt putt course
- Peach Month
- Read James and The Giant Peach with the kids or watch the DVD
- Water Quality Month
- Check your water quality with one of these kits
- National Picnic Month
- Plan the perfect picnic with one of these baskets
And the different weeks are recognized as:
- Week 1 National Simplify your Life Week
- See Click here for the first post in my Simplify Your Life series (available July 29)
- Week 2 National Smile Week
- Week 3 Friendship Week
- Week 4 Be Kind to Humankind Week
(These links will be updated as we get closer to the actual holidays.) Continue reading “August Holidays”
Rubber Band Method
Another positive parenting method I’ve tried was the rubber band method. You might wonder just exactly what this is because I know I did. Don’t worry no children were harmed in the testing of this method in our home.
Well let’s say you have one child. You would place 3 rubber bands around one of your wrist. Your goal is to give at least 3 positive affirmations to your child every day.
So if you catch Johnny picking up his toys without being told. You acknowledge that with a ‘Great job, you are being such a great helper!’ or something similar. Then you move the rubber band to the other wrist.
The rubber bands serve as a reminder. It’s pretty simple, right?
Let’s say you have 2 or 3 kids. You might want to use different colored rubber bands. The only problems I had were:
- I couldn’t find enough different colors to work with my color coding system.
- My wrists are only so big so having 15+ colored rubber bands on them was a big challenge.
My solution was to use one rubber band per child. Then I would move them over as usual. I would try to make sure I found some way to get to each child before starting on my second round.
Again the bands just serve as reminders and once you get in the habit of doing this you may not need them anymore. I haven’t used my rubber bands in a while but I just found them last night so I may pull them out again.
It seems that we’ve kind of hit a brick wall with one child. Not sure if it’s 100% behavior or partly due to this wonderful phase of life called puberty. All I know is that this child has had me at wits end some days and something has to change.
Children thrive on attention and positive attention is so much better than negative. The theory of focus on the good comes into play here. If we want to see more of the positive behavior then we will focus on the good behaviors and try to encourage these.
I’m not saying that the bad behaviors will be ignored because they won’t. Every choice has a consequence whether it is good or bad depends on the choice made. We are just trying to encourage the good choices and help each child to make better choices.
Happy parenting!
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