Please Forgive

Due to some unexpected family challenges, I’m going to be on break for a bit. We’re all fine, so don’t worry. I have had the opportunity to help care for my husband’s grandparents for the past year or so. This week is going to busy with doctors and such while we help them get a few things figured out. But I’ll be back! Hope to see you soon.

A Pet Peeve

Now that my kids are old enough to be in elementary school, I am astonished by the constant bombardment of requests for money. Do not be confused. A public education is anything BUT free. And don’t think paying taxes took care of your responsibility to fund your child’s kindergarten education. My gripe is not so much about whether or not schools should have resources adequate to meet their needs. They should. My gripe is about the methods used to get those resources.

Please donate $25 to our classroom fund.  Please support our school by selling cookie dough so we can buy $35,000 playground equipment.  Please send $2 for our field trip.  Please harass your neighbors to support our walk-a-thon.  Please join PTA for $5.  Please shop at the book fair conveniently held during Parent-Teacher Conferences.  Please come to our school carnival and buy overpriced food and rides and gift baskets.  Please donate to the silent auction at the carnival.  Please donate to our Teacher Appreciate Baskets. Please buy our coupon books. Please send in recipes for our cookbook so you can then buy our cookbook. If you don’t, we won’t give your kid a 25-cent treat, and he’ll feel sad. The requests are truly endless.  Imagine what this would cost me if I had more than two children.

Of course, all these requests are actually optional.  You don’t have to pay.  Obviously, you don’t get to eat nasty, overpriced pizza at the carnival either, but that seems fair, maybe even a blessing.

But there’s a catch to most of these requests. The school doesn’t actually hit up the parents. They hit up MY KIDS to hit me up. They manipulate my emotionally immature second-grader into thinking that if he doesn’t bring money (and fast), he’s failed as a good school citizen. It’s pitiful to watch your seven-year-old beg to give all of his allowance money to the school, so they can get a new playground.

Do you have a playground? Yes.

Do you like playing on it? Yes.

Is it all broken? No.

Is recess fun? Yes.

Why do you need a new one? Because the principal said we do.

It’s like he’s been brainwashed.  My favorite part of this particular funding request is that the school decided  this critical project was worth pulling all the children out of their academic classes for a cookie-selling, playground-earning, indoctrination assembly. Never mind that we cut back on recess so we can have more instruction time.

Similarly, the kids took time out of their busy instruction schedules to browse the book fair.  After that experience, they were conveniently provided paper and pencils so they could write down their wish list of things I should buy them during Parent-Teacher Conferences. It’s not like my kids don’t already have a serious case of the whining I-want-itis.

I am deeply irked me when my children are socially manipulated to come home and manipulate me into coughing up more money all in the name of being a supportive parent. It’s not fun to watch your child cry because you won’t let him go door-to-door selling cookie dough on your block of 8 homes (6 of which house other elementary-aged children). I’m even more peeved when instruction time is taken for this purpose. If you want my money, talk to me. Leave my children out of it.

For now, I just refuse to give them any money and throw the unopened cookie sales packet into the trash when my kids aren’t looking.

Project Box Ideas

So often as moms we get down on ourselves for what we “should” do with our kids. We think about all the creative moms who have great make-up, a clean house, crafty kids, and paper mache pumpkins lining their entry ways.

Nota bene: I can’t help you much with the clean house or the great make-up. Sorry.

But, I have learned that with some preparation on my part, my kids end up doing a whole lot of creative things they wouldn’t otherwise do. So, I came up with the project box. My preparation for project time is handily contained in one box that stores easily and keeps everything ready for that moment we need it. I did forget to mention one thing in the video. I also like to keep on hand a plastic tablecloth. They are often on sale at Wal-Mart as the seasons or holidays change, so that’s a good time to stock up on a couple.

If you want to work on doing creative projects with your kids more frequently, I have two other ideas. First, set aside some time. Maybe it’s only once a week or twice a month, but decide that you’ll play together creatively for a period of time and schedule it. Tell the kids. They’ll hold you to it, and the anticipation and planning can be fun with older kids.

Second, learn to recognize that the time spent cleaning up is usually shorter than the time spent playing. Generally, if you do a little cost-benefit analysis, you’ll realize that it’s going to be worth it. It’s worth it for the time the kids are busy, the learning, growing, and exploring that happens, and often the time you get to yourself to do something like read. This often helps me to be more willing to allow spontaneous project play. If I’ve got at least an hour, it’s always worth the mess to play with the project box.

Finally, although my children are willing to play independently with the project box (especially as they get older), I have never regretted taking some time and playing with them. I love the conversations we have and the insights I get into their lives and minds. You can’t beat an afternoon playing with the kids!

Having said all this, I can still use any ideas you may have on fostering creative project work with kids. Please leave a comment and share what has worked for you.

How do you fit crafty kinds of things into your busy mom days?

Tags: art, creativity, fine motor skills

Book Review: Rainbow Fish

Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister

First off, my apologies for posting so late today (tonight). Our kids are on a fall break, and we’ve been trying to spend some time as a family. And most unfortunately, I have some scheduling issues with my podcasting host. So here we finally are…

I will be stunned and shocked if you are not able to find this book at your library–both your town library and your school library. Rainbow Fish is extremely popular with teachers and parents. If you want to buy it, as usual you can add pennies to our tip jar and purchase through Amazon. But truly, you should find it with out any problem in a book order.

Real Mom Activities: I am suggesting a conversation with your kids about what it means to be a good friend and how important sharing is. Ask your kids what kinds of things they can do to share with others. If it works for your family, you might decide to go through your toy box and share some toys with those who are less fortunate. I try to do this with my kids at least twice a year for two reasons. First, I really do want them to learn how blessed they are and how often others do without. I think it is critical to teach children about service to others concrete examples and experiences. And second, it seems that every year my kids accumulate WAY more toys and stuff than they can possibly love. So, this is also a great to to get some of the clutter out of my house in a positive manner.

Super Mom Activities: As I mentioned this book is really popular with teachers. As a result, you can hardly do a search on Google without bumping into a teacher with a project for Rainbow Fish. And, frankly, if you ask me, all these activities are for super moms. You can truly pick just about any one and have a great activity. We’d love to see pictures of your art. Leave us a comment with a link to your Super Mom Moment.

Tags: art, book reviews, literacy, sensory activities

Allowance Update

Our revised allowance system has been going for about six weeks or so.  It’s definitely better than it ever was before, but it’s also been much harder than I expected.  I think I’ve discovered the major flaw in our system:

Me.

Kind of depressing, really.  I get frustrated or lazy or busy or decide I don’t want to do chores because it’s a lot of work to keep on top of things.  I’m simply awful at monitoring the “family contributions.” In fact, after two or three weeks, the contribution of “Be nice and be kind” was completely dropped.  I don’t even pretend about that one anymore.  Nate was right.

Did you hear me, Nate?  I said, “You were right!” And I did it publicly!

So the family contribution portion of our allowance system is still in flux.  Last week I tried “Share love” in an effort to encourage the kids to serve others.  Since I never managed to follow-up, it was an utter failure.  But, I’m going to try again this week.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…

Charting chores everyday has been problematic, mostly because I hate tracking on charts.  (Yes, it is all about me–remember, I’m the problem.)  For instance, the chore week starts on Saturdays, and I often do not have the chart printed off until Monday afternoon or so.  Not exactly effective.  This is also part of why I’m super bad at tracking the family contributions.

However, I’ve realized that homework time is the best time to work through all the charting we have to do:  homework, reading, chores.  This is kind of hard for me, because I like to get my housework out of the way in the morning.  I like to get all the blah stuff done, so I have the whole day to do the yay stuff.  But, I’m letting that go a little bit.  Dylan and Anya really do need to learn about chores, and it just isn’t happening in the morning.

My kids have not been excited to add 20 minutes to their after school responsibilities.  They are used to zipping through homework as fast as humanly possible and then dashing off to play with friends.  It’s been kind of challenging to slow them down.  Oddly, the way to slow them down has been to add yet another thing to the afternoon.  We’ve started having afternoon snacks.  We do a little homework, do a little chores, have a little snack, do a little reading, finish up any loose ends for chores or homework and then dash out the door to play.  The snack in the middle breaks up the boring, hard stuff and makes the afternoon more fun.

Of course, I have to be with it enough to have some kind of snack in the house.  Harder than you think.

Despite the challenges, I am starting to realize the advantages.  For instance, I loathe taking my kids to the book fair to buy books that they never read more than once.  But, Dylan was adamant that the world would end if he did not own Star Wars: The New Padawan.  In the midst of this very dramatic conversation, it dawned on me: “This is precisely the kind of thing his allowance was intended for.”  I think you could have seen the light bulb over my head.  Our problem was promptly solved, because he had $3.99 to buy said book.  Dylan actually read his new book at least once a day for the last week.  The realization that allowance money buys all the stuff that they want, but I think is wasteful, has been liberating and adds greatly to our success.  Also, we have less of that whining drama.

The final advantage to the system is that, despite my difficulties with follow-up, chores are being accomplished much more regularly, and the kids are starting to take the initiative do chores.  That in itself is an amazing thing.

Here’s to finding my groove soon.  I think it’s worth sticking this one out.  How’s it working for you?

Tags: allowance, anya, chores, dylan, money