It’s that time of year already! That time when we start considering where and how often we will travel to speak in the spring and summer. We haven’t been traveling as much the past few years as we have been working hard to first of all revise Character Quality Language Arts (CQLA) (finished four years ago) and now to revise and complete the entire series of Meaningful Composition. These two projects have been super expensive and time consuming and left few resources or energy for a lot of traveling and speaking.
We are hoping to get back out there more in 2016, and we would love to come to your area with our Raising Kids With Character parenting seminar. This seminar is flexible and has been widely received! We love helping parents with parenting—and this seminar lets us do that on a larger scale.
Contact us here!
Here are some details for you:
1. The seminar can be sponsored by a church, Sunday school, small group, community, homeschool group, etc. It is for any Christian group who wants to learn about character-focused parenting from birth to tweens. (See our tween and teen workshop list here.)
2. It is flexible. We can accommodate most schedules, including a shorter seminar (Friday night and Saturday morning) or a longer one (Friday night and all day Saturday) or even an extended one if Moms would like to do some efficiency, organizing, or “baby/toddler” things during the day on Friday (my personal favorite because arrangment I get to talk to more moms!).
3. It is inexpensive. This is our ministry. Our book sales and cottage classes are for-profit, but these seminars are our “mission field.” We don’t need to make money—we just need to be able to pay our expenses and sell some of our products on tables. Easy peasy. That means that parents will not have to pay a lot to attend (though we do recommend charging something so parents commit to it).
4. The registrations can be set up in multiple ways: (1) Your group can handle the registrations and pay our expenses with your “per person” charge; (2) We can handle the registrations fully on our end; (3) Your group can handle the registrations but scholarship your people and have your group pay our expenses.
5. We are always asked about a minimum number of attendees. We love to speak to hundreds at homeschool conventions, and we would love to get our parenting messages out there to hundreds as well. However, we can usually hold a seminar for as few as thirty attendees.
Here are a few scenarios (though you can take a look at our full workshop list if you would like for us to add something, come an extra day or two, or substitute something)
(Session descriptions are found below potential schedules.)
Short Seminar
Friday Night
- The Five W’s of Character Training
- Parenting Paradigms
- Options: Marriage OR Children and Chores OR Diligence Training
Saturday Morning
- Early Qualities for Toddlers and Preschoolers
- Child Training vs. Heart Training
- Helping Tweens Grow in Character and Virtue
Long Seminar
Friday Night
- The Five W’s of Character Training
- Parenting Paradigms
- Options: Marriage OR Children and Chores OR Diligence Training
Saturday Morning
- Starting Out Right With Babies and Toddlers
- Early Qualities Preschoolers
- Child Training vs. Heart Training
Saturday Afternoon
- Helping Tweens Grow in Character and Virtue
- Honesty vs. Deceit
- Handling Character Issues (vs. Heart Issues)
- Q and A
Extended Seminar
Friday Daytime: Any of these options (three to six sessions, depending on half day vs full day—most of these sessions are touched on informally in our podcast episodes)
- Starting Out Right With Babies and Toddlers
- How to Become an Efficiency Expert
- Introduction to Freezer Cooking
- Efficiency in the Kitchen
- Scheduling a Preschooler’s Day
- Preparing a Child to Learn to Read (Preschool/Pre-reading)
- Five Ways to Be More Efficient in the Kitchen
- An Organized Family
- Utilizing Chore Charts, Morning Routine Charts, Bedtime Routines, and After School/Homework Lists
- Homework Help: Tips From Language Lady for Homework and More
- Personal Organizational Strategies for Mom
Friday Night
- The Five W’s of Character Training
- Parenting Paradigms
- Options: Marriage OR Children and Chores OR Diligence Training
Saturday Morning
- Starting Out Right With Babies and Toddlers
- Early Qualities for Preschoolers
- Child Training vs. Heart Training
Saturday Afternoon
- Helping Tweens Grow in Character and Virtue
- Honesty vs. Deceit
- Handling Character Issues (vs. Heart Issues)
- Q and A
Character Training Seminar Session Descriptions
The Five W’s of Character Training—
This workshop, the first in our popular “Raising Kids With Character” seminar (though may be used separately, as well), teaches parents the what, who, when, where, why (and how!) of character training in the home. Using Scripture and thirty+ years of parenting experience, the Reishes convince parents in this workshop that it starts with us–and is up to us–to train our children in godly parenting, how and where this takes place (it’s not as elaborate as you might think), and much more!
Parenting Paradigms–
How we parent begins with what we believe–what we believe about how children are when they come into this world, whose responsibility child training is, what our role should be in it, what we believe Scripture tells us about parenting, timing and appropriate age of training, empathy in parenting, and much more. What we believe will dictate what we do every single day of our parenting lives.
Find out why and how in this workshop.
Starting Out Right With Babies and Toddlers—
Demanding toddlers become disobedient preschoolers, disobedient preschoolers become surly elementary children, surly elementary children become disrespectful teens, and disrespectful teens become entitled young adults.
What we do in parenting our babies and toddlers makes a huge difference in the success of our parenting in other stages. This workshop focuses on the first four qualities that are essential for parenting babies and toddlers–contentment, cheerfulness, obedience, and submission.
Early Qualities for Preschoolers—
This workshop takes the first four qualities needed for babies and toddlers–submission, obedience, contentment, and cheerfulness–and builds on those in the life of the four to six year old child. In this workshop, Reishes explain how to apply those in your little one’s life, while raising kids whom others enjoy being around and that older siblings adore! Loving and training these ages are some of the most blessed years of parenting (along with many other years!)–and parenting children with boundaries, love, fun, and biblical concepts makes all the difference in their dispositions, the family’s efficiency and joy, and family unity.
Child Training vs Heart Training—
Something should start to happen in our character training between the ages of eight and ten. This workshop teaches how to transition from child training to heart training-and how the foundational character training plays a role in that transition. How do we get from “putting out fires” in our kids’ behavior to training their hearts for life? Ray and Donna have insights from their thirty+ years of parenting that can help parents move into heart training of their children effectively.
Helping Tweens Grow in Character and Virtue—
Taking tweens and young teens from obedience and submission for the sake of avoiding punishment to genuine respect, self-control, diligence, truthfulness, responsibility, and more can be a daunting task. But it can be done! And we can enjoy those ten to fourteen year olds instead of dreading the next confrontation! This workshop focuses on how to help our children grow in character and virtue because “it’s the right thing to do”–and apply those qualities to their lives for life!
Training Children to Be Diligent Workers —
RKWC goes beyond a daily chore chart (though that is certainly a part of it) to explain the basics of raising diligent workers in the home. The Reishes have found several keys that have made their children not just “chore doers” but responsible, diligent children at early ages. This session touches on setting up chore schedules, training children in chores, family unity in order to work together well, cautions, and much, much more.
Honesty vs. Deceit
In this important workshop, the Reishes introduce various scenarios or honesty and deceit and how common things like “just kidding” or telling “half truths” lead to more dishonesty. They gives dozens and dozens of important tips for counteracting dishonest habits that develop so easily and quickly in our children when these areas are neglected. They also include how to teach honesty lessons, how to become a “family of honesty and uprightness,” and poignant verses to teach our children about God’s expectations of honesty in our lives. This new workshop was born out of the Reishes many talks with families and the struggles they are facing as well as their experiences teaching up to two hundred kids each year in their cottage classes.
Handling Character Issues (vs. Heart Issues)
So once you have determined the difference between heart issues and character issues—and you understand how to handle those important heart ones, what do you do with chores left undone, bikes left in the driveway, forgetfulness with school papers and assignments, sloppiness, and more? Ray and Donna draw on their thirty-three years of parenting experience to give you solutions to some of these “character issues” that could lead to limited success as teens, college students, and adults.
Contact us here!
