ThisToo Shall Pass

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Momzoo

This Too Shall Pass

This Too Shall Pass…..

enough already!

Service Ornaments

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Momzoo

I know Christmas is over, and decorations are packed away for next year, but I had a friend ask how my children did with their service project, instead of exchanging gifts with each other. So I thought I would do a Christmasy post in January.

The first Monday in December, my kids drew names out of a hat, the person they drew were their service buddy for the month. The goal was to preform some act of service every day, when they did their service and reported it to Dadzoo or I they were able to add a “service ornament” to the Christmas tree.

They started off the project with a huge bang, the first day they had all done some kind of service before I had even woken up. I was very much encouraged. As time went on, they forgot and had to be reminded everyday, which is fine, but it even got to the point where some weren’t doing service at all. My more motivated children were pretty consistent, but the lesser motivated children had to be reminded, and still forgot sometimes. It was also a tad hard with my youngest, he is 3, and while he could do little things for his secret buddy, it was mostly up to me to help him do it, and sometimes even I forgot!

So, was it a success? I would say, yes. There was a spirit of service, and a lot of nice things were done for each other. We will be doing it again next year, for sure, but a little different. I think we will either do it for a shorter time, maybe the week before Christmas, or switch service buddies a few time throughout the month to keep things fresh, new and fun.

Did you try anything new this Christmas?

Vision

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Momzoo

A year ago I wrote about a wonderful book I had just read, called “Teaching Self-Government”.

To read the post click (here)

I have really like the methods I learned in this book, but the last few months I have noticed my children’s obedience lacking, and the feeling in our home wasn’t so great. We weren’t talking to each other nicely, there was lots of sarcasm and back talking. I decided to re-read “Teaching Self-Government”, hoping to pick up something I had missed, and give myself a refresher.

At the start of the book, Mrs. Peck talks about having vision. I have always had a vision of what I want my family to be in the future. I can picture events, feelings, conversation, even the little faces of my future grand babies. In thinking of this vision, and reading Mrs. Peck’s thoughts on the subject I came to two conclusions: one, that my family will never be the family of my vision if we keep going the way we were; and two, if I never share my vision of the future with my children, how can they help work towards this vision.

Yesterday, for family night, Dadzoo and I talked to the kids about vision. We talked about what vision is, how we can use our vision to plan for our futures, that if we don’t have a vision of what we want, we don’t have anything to work towards.

I then shared my vision of what I would like our family to be in 20 years.

The kids thought it was great fun. We talked about how old they would be, we speculated on who would be married, how many kids would they have, what their life would be like and added that all into my vision, and we created OUR vision.

How will this help our family, I am not completely sure at this point, but what I do know, is that now we have a vision, something to look forward to, something to work towards, together.