Summer Reading

The three youngest are reading through Just for Me: My Family. On the cover it says for girls 6-9. I disagree with that. It's for a younger age than that. (They took out all my harder activities.) Maybe kindergarten through second grades. Or older if they are new to your family or delayed. No matter what age it's best for, I'm doing it with a 9-year-old boy, a 9-year-old girl and a 13-year-old girl because the activities are geared for families and fun for everyone.

We've gotten a slow start due to physical therapy, band camp, hip hop, tumbling and gymnastics as well as other adventures and activities. 

We started it one evening after we were done with everything else.

He doesn't care that it's suppose to be for girls. (He knows there are activities with food coming up!)

The first activity was a family tree. Although it doesn't say to do this in the book (it was cut), we added roots and wrote birth parent names on them. The twins know both birth parent names although their mother died when they were quite young. Jasmine knows her mom's name, so that's what they wrote.

Doing the family tree gave us a chance to talk again about the importance of birth parents and how the kids got their looks and talents from their birth parents, and that we are building on those talents.

If you look closely, you can see the names on the roots.

We only went back as far as grandparents for now.

Our next activity was an indoor bowling game. 

The best part was that everyone worked together to make it.

And they all got along!

  

Even though they've bowled for real, they enjoyed this simple indoor game. Maybe because they made it themselves.

You can follow us as we read through the book and see more about how we made the bowling game on my other BLOG.

If you have girls ages 5-8, please join us in reading through the book and doing the activities. It's especially good for families who have foster or adopted children. And encourage the boys to join in on the activities. One activity per chapter is a whole family activity. The bigger ones can help the younger ones. Even though the book itself doesn't deal with a lot of issues, it's a way to start those discussions with your children. And it affirms non traditional families. Join us.