Category: random

Last week, I posted a photo in Instagram stories about our collaborative sewing project as a part of our March Family Focus on teamwork and cooperation. Today, I’ve got details about how we approached this project, and well as photos of the final product! Continue reading “Teamwork and Cooperation Activity: Collaborative Sewing” →

A few years ago, our family spent a Sunday afternoon creating “care kits” to keep in the car and give to homeless and needy people that we see around town. We passed the last one out last fall, and our daughters have been asking ever since to make some more. Recently, we read The Teddy Bear a handful of times early in February, as it was a big hit from our list of more than 50 compassion and empathy books to go along with our February Family Focus Traits of compassion and empathy. We also listened to the Big Life Kids Podcast, episode 17: Discover the Superpower of Kindness, a few times, giving us an opportunity to learn about one girl who was able to give homes to homeless people! The combination of these stories and the family conversations we’ve been having about compassion and empathy meant that the time was ripe for us to take action as a family. And, fortunately, the girls were eager to make more care kits!

So, when we had a free morning a few weekends ago, we all went together to the store to pick out items for new care kits, and then spent the afternoon packing them up. My car is now loaded up, and the girls are eager to be able to give to people in need over the next few months! Continue reading “Compassion and Empathy Activity: Creating “Care Kits”” →

As you might remember, my husband and I decided to focus family conversations, meetings, read alouds, and more on 12 character traits in 2020, one for each month.

As a way to connect my Children’s Lit Love work to our family’s goals, I’m publishing booklists at the beginning of each month, centered around the character trait theme for that month. Most of my posts throughout that month, then, will be specific book recommendations, conversations we’re having, or activities that we’re doing around that specific trait. You can see my January booklist of 25+ books to foster growth mindsets here.

Our family focus of the month for January is fostering growth mindsets. While we spent a lot of time reading our growth mindset books starting January 1, and we had many informal conversations around “I can do hard things” attitudes and things we might want to learn in 2020, our family focus on developing (and strengthening, because my husband already has a pretty strong growth mindset in most areas) growth mindsets didn’t formally start until Sunday night. Read on to see what that conversation looked like! Continue reading “January Family Focus: Developing Growth Mindsets” →