I am in birthday planning mode right now. Sarah is about to be nine and it’s been rather chaotic around here. I’ve been thinking a lot about things like loot bags and birthday cakes and presents.
One of the parents of asked us what Sarah would like for her birthday. If I had to give one answer it’d be BOOKS. She’s really into historical fiction. Specifically, the lives of the Tudors. (Go figure.) Every once in awhile she’ll pipe up about King Henry his poor wives. It’s history 101. I’m going to have to keep the Wikipedia page about the Tudors open on my computer for easy access from now on.
One of our gifts to Sarah will probably be a book. We know her well so we know what kind of books she’d enjoy. She likes comics just as much as she enjoys historical novels.
But sometimes kids are hard to buy books for, especially if it happens to be one you don’t know very well.
I have a name for you: Graeme Base. His work is immensely creative, spans many age groups and is interesting to adults too. Are you familiar with his work?
Friends gave us a copy of The Waterhole when Emma was small. There was a time when she insisted we pour over it with her every night before she went to sleep.
Last week Emma snagged a copy of The Eleventh Hour from our community bookshelf. It’s brilliant. Genius. Delightful. The writing, the illustration, the DETAIL. It is amazing on many many levels. I can’t imagine a boy or girl who wouldn’t love it.
As a family we read from a chapter book every night. Right now we are just finishing the VERY LAST Harry Potter. We’re at the point where Dumbledore and Harry are at a heavenly King’s Cross, chatting about You-Know-Who. The girls are on the edge of their seats.
I’m not sure what’s next. Recommendations are welcome!
What are your kids reading right now?
Our philosophy about kids and chores can be summarized like this:
- a) Chores are not tied to allowance. a.k.a. if I don’t get money for chores, why should they?
- b) If asked, they are expected to follow through (hopefully without comment and eyeball rolling)
- c) We clean up each other’s messes as required.
- d) We don’t have chore lists or specific tasks i.e. It’s never Emma’s week to take out the green bin, but if I ask her, she has to do it.
We have had mixed results with this way of handling chores, not terrible, but not great either.
Mark hit upon a good idea awhile ago and I wanted to share it with you because it’s made a huge difference in our household.
It’s not earth-shattering, in fact, it’s laughably simple and many of you might already be doing this… are you ready? The whole family cleans the house for a focused 15 minutes together, right after dinner.
Someone (usually me) is cleaning the kitchen after dinner anyway, which takes 15-20 minutes, so why shouldn’t everyone be doing something to help out? i.e. (INSTEAD OF LOLLING AROUND MAKING ME FEEL RESENTFUL OF THEIR LEISURE TIME.)
There isn’t enough room in our kitchen for four people to help wash/tidy/sweep/put away the dishes. So, we divide and conquer the rest of the house.
Someone grabs the vacuum. Someone sorts the recycling. Someone straightens up the front entrance (a huge issue for us since we don’t have a good place to store our stuff (there’s no proper closet – with a door – to hide our coats and shoes!) and someone takes care of tidying the living room etc.
If anyone is “caught” doing something other than cleaning we tack five minutes on to the remaining time. This has only happened once.
It is amazing how much we get done in that short amount of time. Fifteen minutes doesn’t seem like a lot, but when four people are keenly tidying it adds up to an hour of cleaning. And it’s made a difference around here.
Next up: the basement. (I keep saying that but I can’t bring myself to go down there. It’s just so overwhelming. Ugh.)
Right now I am happy about …
