Do you have family traditions?  Do you ever make New Years resolutions?  For a few years we have been setting family goals each January.  We love to involve the whole family as much as possible.  This has become a new family tradition that we love.

Before January rolls around, we, as parents, sit down and discuss what God has put on our hears and minds for the year to come.  Things we want to learn more about, things we want to see happen or change in our lives, commitments we want to make, things we want to teach our children.  It becomes a brainstorming list of..”when all is said and done- at the end of the year what do we want to BE SURE we accomplish?”  Each year we do it, it causes us to look farther into our future and our children’s future.  We ask ourselves, What do we want for our children 10 years (or so) from now and how can we work toward that?

Then on New Years Day, after a hearty helping of gooey cinnamon rolls, we stay at the dinning room table and start talking as a family.  Sean hangs huge paper on the wall and we take notes, list ideas, and more.  This year we provided categories for our children to think in.  (lest we end up with a long list of yearly goals like making chocolate chip cookies everyday!!)  We chose 5 categories that we, as parents, had prayed through and committed to for the year to come.  Our 5 were:

1- LOVING OTHERS (practical things we can do to love others the way God created them in His image)

2- DISCIPLESHIP (opportunities to learn new things so that we can teach others wisely)

3- SERVANT LEADERSHIP (opportunities for diligence, independence, responsibility & service)

4- EDUCATION (areas in which we want to grow both individually and collectively)

5- RELATIONSHIPS (to either start, build, or continue building)

That was our list- you could choose anything- less or more- but it was helpful for us to have a structure to build our thoughts from.  Then, after brainstorming, we leave it up on the wall and take the next few days (or more) to think it over, discuss with other family members, and pray earnestly about God’s will for our family and our willingness to commit to these things.

In some of the categories, people have individual goals and in others we have family goals.  They aren’t huge and lofty- they are practical yet life changing goals.  Sometimes, we as parents have a goal that we set before a child, and sometimes the child has a goal for the whole family. Sometimes a child comes up with a goal then a sibling has an idea for turning it into something the whole family can do.  For example, some of our kids love to plant flowers. Well as parents we want our kids to be able to enjoy that WHILE they are learning other things too.  So we asked the group “ how can we make this a family opportunity for servant leadership?  SO the kids want to grow colorful flowers from seed (perennials) and learn all about it as part of schooling.  Then, on our “All Church Work Day”, they want to plant them all over the church property since we have so many people that come to our church property for the enjoyment of the land. A way to bless people with Gods creation.

GOALS THAT CAN “GROW” OVER THE YEAR—Here is a simple example:  Our church already serves at the Hartford Rescue Mission once a month. It is mostly attended and organized by our church youth group. Sean has been a few times and he had a desire to involve our kids.  Knowing that would take time to learn since many of our kids are younger or have varying abilities in a setting such as a Rescue Mission, we decided to make it a family goal that “grows”.

Sean will take our kids “Noah’s arc style” (two at a time) to go with Daddy and “learn the ropes”.  Learning how to act, how to interact, where are my personal gifts best suited for service, etc.  Then, once ALL the kids have built individual confidence in their servant leadership abilities, we will attend as a whole family.  That may take two months, or it make take the better part of a year.  We are OK with that.  It is not our goal to get everyone there as quick as possible, it is our goal to teach them to be confident servant leaders for God.  We will get there when each child is ready and able. Oh but what a glorious day as a family that will be!!!

THAT is why we set family goals.  Without planning that out, we probably wouldn’t do it (to be honest) or maybe just some of us would go.  But we desire to serve together as a whole family, because God put us all together for a reason and we want to keep it that way!

When we posted the entry about wisdom book journaling pages, we missed one page.  I am adding it here, and have also added it to the original post.  Sorry for the oversight and I pray the Lord bless you as you teach godly character.

WB Character Quality Worksheet

So it’s been a month…. but we finally got these pictures posted.

It all started with our cousin Lisa.  She lives in Chicago, and she was coming to visit us for the first time.  She had never been to much of the east coast, so we started thinking—where could we take her?  We had an “Adoption Picnic” (a reunion of sorts for our agency) already scheduled at Central Park,NYC for that weekend.  So we thought..what about Providence, RI?  Lots of great historical stuff, beautiful coast, not as many people as NYC.  Perfect.

We were excited to find out that it was “the end of the season” for the coast, so we got an amazing deal on a boat ride around Rhode Island.  It was a tour of all the light houses.  In addition, we got to see many historical buildings, famous mansions, and even pass by some really interesting ships.  The kid favorite was a replica of the Mayflower.  It was out taking people on a tour also.  On this day to RI, we were blessed to take our friends the Carrolls with us and their cute twins, Timothy and Silas.  You’ll see them in the pictures- usually by our little Sarah. That day we also went to Battleship Cove- and got to go inside of real battleships.  For older kids there are great museum features, but we skipped most of that as we only had three “readers” in the bunch.  Plus the Big Guns are WAY more fun! Mom’s favorite- the sleeping quarters-  40+ people packed in there per room—hey, never complain about your room again! oh- and check out their dough mixer!!!

We divided the trips into different days.  We went to NYC for the picnic.  The picnic turned out to be rather lack-luster, so we voted, on a crazy spontaneous whim—LET’S DO IT!!!! Let’s go to the Empire State Building.  It was actually September 11th.  We figured it might help us out, there may be less people there!!  So off we went, Aunt Lisa, our favorite baby sitter Miss Brittany, and the Martin Tribe!!Nothing was really wheelchair accessible—not the battle ship, not NYC, but that didn’t stop us- throw a baby on the hip and Jamie got the stroller- lucky duck.

As we were driving down the streets of NYC trying to figure out where in the world to park our huge van, Dad and Mom looked at each other—“Are we really doing this?” “This is crazy- OUR kids to the top of the Empire State building??” Mom said a quiet prayer to herself—keep me sane and patient!

Hey- when in Rome!!!

So here’s our pix of the two days. What we learned.  Be brave, be spontaneous, try new things even if they are crazy, plan on having fun, take advantage of each moment—ENJOY YOUR FAMILY!

Picture help—for those of you who don’t know… you can click on the first picture, and then watch them like a slide show in larger view.  Once the first one pops up, you can click “next” in the top right corner.

Our Journaling Pages for use with the Wisdom Books:

Wisdom Book Cover

WB Scripture Meditation Worksheet

WB Life Classroom Worksheet

WB Journal Page

WB Creation Page

WB Command of Christ

WB Biography Report

WB Character Quality Worksheet

CHARACTER

One of the many reasons we decided to home school our children was for ALL of them to receive a Godly education.  It is our desire as parents to see our children grow in wisdom and stature, building in them Godly character and wisdom that will both bless them now and in their future.

Raising children with different learning abilities, or special needs of sorts, doesn’t change that.  We still want the same things for them.  The path to that end sometimes looks VERY different.  Whether your child has ADHD, Autism, Down Syndrome, Dyslexia, or anything else you could add to the list–  we know first hand that YOU WANT THE VERY BEST FOR YOUR CHILD.  You want God’s best for them and their future.

It is for that reason that we chose to use the Wisdom Books for home schooling over other curriculum. It is built on Godly character.  The focus isn’t on how well you can do long division, instead the focus is on Godly character from the inside out.  Deepening your understanding of what it means to live a life of service, or virtue, or joyfulness, or….a long list of many other character qualities.  This is true “success” and can be “achieved” by any individual NO MATTER WHAT THEIR LEARNING ABILITY. Of this we are confident.  Yes, it might be a bit more challenging to get there, but it is possible!

This brings us to the reason for this blog entry.  We feel selfish keeping it to ourselves.  We have so loved our Wisdom Books and have labored over the past year “finding” a way to help ALL of our children glean the most from them.  We love their “journaling pages” contained within, but have found them hard to apply with many of our children. So……  we prayed, we brain stormed, we discussed, and prayed some more.  This is our end result.

We share it with all of you.  Please pass it on to ANYONE who you know would be blessed by it.

We should add that these would be applicable to families with young children as well- they don’t have to have a “special need”, they can just be an early learner joining in the joy of journaling what they have learned through the Wisdom Books.

We have “modified” all the journaling pages in the Wisdom Books and added a few extra as well.  This way ALL of our children could learn to journal, record what they have learned, and hopefully learn how to communicate it better to the world.

Attached you will find 8 different journaling pages.  Each has a “Modification #1” and “Modification #2”. The #1 is for the intermediate learner who is able to write at least some sentences on their own or with guidance.  The #2 is for the learner who has yet to master all their writing skills, but is still learning the concepts being taught.  Each page has a small box in the upper corner with “directions” on when and where to use it in correlation to the Wisdom Books.  We print all of ours and make them into a little book for each kid.  Please use them anyway you see fit for your children. We will link them either here or to the right. But we are working on the link and our “technology skills” 

Enjoy & pass it on! 

One More Thing…..

We must also add that a HUGE part of our family’s enjoyment of the Wisdom Books comes in promoting positive character development.  We were blessed to connect with a wonderful young woman, Esther, who shared with us some great ideas from Character First! (To learn more about it, you can contact her via email thru the link on the right hand side of our site called “The Staddon Family” or click on the link “Character First!”)  We added these hands-on ideas to our  continued practice of “The Purple Boxes”— which you can read more about in a blog entry of ours entitled “An Eruption of Joy”.

ENJOY!!!

Recently, we were blessed to have good friends of ours come stay for the week.  Sarah & Rachel Cooney have been in our lives for nearly 10  years now (as well as the rest of their wonderful family), and we couldn’t imagine not knowing them!  It has been a joy to watch them grow into beautiful, Godly women, who devote so much of their time and energy to other young women & teens. Amidst their busy lives, they came to CT (braving the possibility of seeing Mr. Black Bear) just to hang with us!!!

Hours of freeze tag, capture the flag, soccer, frisbee, dress up, coloring, games of miniature golf, ice cream, Oreos, and more!  They even gave our girls adorable hair cuts (extra bonus that they are both professional hair dressers)!!! Clearly also fashion experts—just check out those fabulous glasses they are wearing in the pictures below!

When all was said and done, at the end of a super long day of play, these great friends still weren’t done.  I had shared with them my goal of getting the ENTIRE school year planned, organized, and sorted into bins before September rolled around. So, each evening they helped me copy, print, sort, and bind up notebooks to go with each of our upcoming Wisdom Books.  There were so many papers, that we lost count night after night.  So I decided to add it all up just to see how much AMAZING hard work they did. They spiral bound 36 notebooks for our Wisdom Book Units,  as well as 18 handwriting/ABC notebooks for our younger ones to use every month of the year!  That’s a lot of spiral binding!!!  I printed out my monthly calendar plans for each, grabbed related books off the shelf, and stuffed the bins. THANK YOU RACHEL & SARAH for being such AMAZING servants and friends. Our school year is planned till the end of the year! Wow- I set the goal, but I truly didn’t think I would reach it- Thank you for helping me—what a gift!

HOME SCHOOLING FAMILIES : If you are a home schooler and currently use “lap books” or something similar—might I suggest to you checking out one of my FAVORITE sites Notebooking Pages.  It takes any unit or theme you can think of to learn about (from handwriting to presidents to ancient China) and sets it into pre-formatted pages. You could put them in a 3 ring or spiral bind them. I like binding them so they take up less space and lay FLAT on their work space.  So as your kids are learning, note taking, writing, whatever- they can learn to organize all their work.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE – did I say LOVE – these pages.  They help me teach one topic to a LARGE variety of learning styles and abilities. Their site has LOTS of free down loads so you can sample.  Of course being a lover of organized things, I bought the whole set. Check it out www.notebookingpages.com

Enjoy!