A Christmas Carol, Gift of the Magi, If You’re Missing Baby Jesus, The Christmas Tapestry, The Burglar’s Christmas, The Birth, The Luke Chronicles, Cosmic Christmas.….these are just a few of our favorite “young teens and up” stories that we read or listen to at Christmas. Just because our kids are all over twelve doesn’t mean we have to stop reading aloud at Christmas time. (As a matter of fact, we still read a favorite Christmas short story on our family decorating night and another one on our family Christmas Eve—with twelve adult kids!)

(Check out my Annotated Christmas Book List with our favorites, descriptions, and ratings!)

Below are a couple of links to books I use and love. I am an affiliate for Amazon.com. If you click on the links below I will earn a small commission. Thank you for your support of this blog!

If you’ve gotten out of the habit of reading aloud and aren’t sure how the family will respond to asking them to join for Christmas stories, here are some suggestions:

1) Choose a very short story (like one included in this post!). Don’t go for long and drawn out when adding a new tradition.

2) Add it to something you already do. For example, add it to Christmas Eve dinner or Christmas morning rolls or driving to Grandma’s.

3) Choose something fun at first. The two stories included in this post are fun ones to begin with–a traditional, well-known story AND a contemporary spin-off of it. I think your family will like them!

4) Go back to an old favorite! Don’t be afraid to pull out an old picture book (see annotated list above!) that you all loved around the Christmas tree in years gone by! Christmas is a time for family, togetherness, and memory making. Bringing out an old favorite picture book (Tale of Three Trees or Jingle the Christmas Clown) might be the perfect way to start reading Christmas stories again!

5) Keep it short. When we are adding something to our holiday get-togethers, we start out short until we see how everybody likes it. I have several collections of Christmas stories with short stories. One of these might be perfect for your Christmas dinner reading!

6) Do a picture book for the littles–and watch the biggies gather around!

7) Put lovely Christmas coffee table books out during the holiday season! This will draw people into your read aloud time.

8) Use audio stories while your crew wraps gifts, decorates the tree, or makes goodies. This is a good way to bring Christmas stories back into the “older kids/adult kids” home. Don’t bombard them–just say, “Hey, I found this audio site to listen to stories. Let’s listen to our old favorite, Gift of the Magi, while we drop buckeyes. (Or get sentimental on them and bring out some Adventures in Odyssey Christmas episodes like “Pokenberry Christmas”!

I hope this week finds you celebrating the Christ child, creating new memories with your family, and reading stories! 😉

Read a version of the classic “Scrooge” and one of the modern “Scrooge” here or by tapping on the image below.

P.S. What is your favorite “older kids'” Christmas story? Did your crew like today’s “modern Scrooge” story?

The post Traditional and Contemporary Scrooge Stories (2 Free Christmas Stories!) appeared first on Character Ink.

Through the years, our reading time went down to two to four hours a day. And we all look back fondly on those days—even my thirty-four and thirty year olds still talk about all of that read aloud time. And how wonderful it was to have that much time to read and learn together.

Some of our favorite readings were definitely Christmas stories, traditions, song books, collections, and more. We even increased our reading time during the holidays (not sure how!)!

My bookshelves are still full of our favorite Christmas stories—and each year when our children, ages eighteen to thirty-four, come to decorate for Christmas and for our Christmas Eve party, we always pull out some of the collections of stories and read one or two aloud.

So it’s only fitting that I pass on some of the titles to young mamas who want great books to read at Christmas time—via The Annotated Christmas Book List for Families!

From the forward:

“Different ones have asked for more read aloud ideas, especially my very favorites, so I thought I would list them by age and by category (i.e. “Bible-related”; traditions; devotional; etc.) with three stars by my “very-most-favorite-if-we-only-read-a-handful-of-christmas-books-this-year-this-would-be-one-ofthem”!
Hope this helps you as you prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ with your sweet children.
Note: Many of the books on this list make for wonderful devotionals for anybody—not just for read alouds!

Key:

★★★Wouldn’t want to go a Christmas without it

★★Great

★Good enough for my list! 🙂

Note: I have included “out of print” ones because you can often pick them up used or at the library.”

Feel free to pass the link to this list along. I would love to bless many families with our amazing Christmas book list.

Love and hope,
Donna

Click on the picture below to download your FREE copy of The Annotated Christmas Book List 🙂

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Now that I am done homeschooling, I have been expanding my home business offerings. My husband and I are still writing and teaching parenting through Character Ink/Raising Kids With Character. I continue to write curriculum (including new downloadable products and finishing my Meaningful Composition series). I still teach Cottage Classes to homeschoolers one day a week. I added private students last year—and I love it! So much like my homeschooling days with my kids. This year I also added my Plexus supplement business.

But, when you’ve homeschooled for thirty-two years and filled nearly every minute of every week day with work you love (teaching my kids and being with them!), you just need even more work when you are in your mid-fifties! 🙂 So I have started a healthy living blog to share my sugar-free baking, healthy mixes, time management, and work-at-home secrets.

I would love to teach you there in addition to Character Ink! And to get you started, I have written a one-hundred page e-book that teaches readers how to cut sugar out of their family’s life—what to substitute when, where to purchase substitutions, how to use them, and more. It includes incremental recipes to get you started while you purchase few ingredients in the beginning (something crucial for new sugar-free/healthier cooks).

You can get the free e-book here! Check out the blog while you are there—I already have some great info up to help you.

Question: What are your greatest frustrations in trying to cook and bake more healthfully for your family? How can I help you?

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Filling an entire day with activities and fun and learning and peace and rest and nutrition and, and, and for toddlers and preschoolers can be a bit overwhelming.

This is, in large part, why I recommend having Room Time for these kids. I talk about that extensively in this post, podcast, and link round up.

Regardless of whether you choose to have a Room Time for your littles each day (or a story time or a Bible Time or an Activity Time or a Preschool Time or any other time!), I recommend that you have an arsenal of activities and fun that you pull out for them—toys and activities that are not available all the time but that you get out for them to do as a “special.”

And I have just the list for this time! My Toddler and Preschool Activities list. It is a freebie to friends of Character Ink (that’s you!), and it goes a long way in providing educational, focusing, fun, and boredom busting times for these sweet littles.

I recommend that you pin this list and use it for Christmas and birthday lists for grandparents, garage sale and thrift store shopping trips, and more.

Put these activities and toys in tubs, bins, or baskets up on high shelves and make a big deal out of them when you use them.

Play with your kids! They will learn so much from the interaction that you have with them as you use these toys and activities.

Get your free Toddler and Preschool Activities List here!

Question: What are your favorite activities for this age group? And how do you utilize that activity?

The post Toddler & Preschool Activities List appeared first on Character Ink.

If you’re already subscribed to the blog or the newsletter, you don’t have to do a thing…these freebies will show up in your inbox!  If you’re not subscribed and would like to be, click here!

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Click here to download the printable Sample Checklist Challenge!

This video has Donna Reish, author of the Checklist Challenge method, teaching how to use the Checklist Challenge. The Checklist Challenge is included in nearly every writing project in every Character Ink Press book (including Character Quality Language Arts; Meaningful Composition; Write On, Mowgli; and Write On, Peter Pan). This sample one may be tweaked and used over and over again in classrooms, homeschools, and co-ops.

The Checklist Challenge has the following characteristics/benefits:

(1) Each task is given separately (i.e. not just a big master list with no explanation). The tasks are explained and samples are provided.

(2) The checklist has check boxes (one per paragraph) for each essay/report/story that you can customize to a certain project. It is clear that a paper has four paragraphs, so most of the task should be done four times—once per paragraph.

(3) The tasks are skills learned in grammar. Once a child learns how to use quotations, he should practice them immediately by putting them in his writing. The Checklist Challenge marries grammar and writing in a way that other programs do not.

(4) Coding instructions are given so that a student can be taught to code his additions and revisions for easy teacher-grading.

And so much more.

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Find Out Your Kids’ Faves!

In my recent podcast, Ten Tips for Staying Close During Intense Training Times With Tweens and Teens, I talk about blessing and surprising your kids with little treats to bring in some fun—and make your child feel special. One way that you can keep track of each child’s favorite is to use some type of Kids’ Faves inventory/worksheet.

It just so happens that we have one for you—for free— to our newsletter subscribers. So if this sounds like something you need or want to use with your kids,scroll down to the end of this post, subscribe, download, print, and use!  (If you’re already a subscriber, go ahead and enter your email…you won’t get the newsletter twice, but you’ll still get the newsletter!)

If you don’t want to use our list, you can, of course, create your own.

Here are some tips for using such a list (from the front matter of our Kids’ Faves Worksheets):

This little tool is useful for many reasons:

(1)    It will help you with your Christmas shopping throughout the year (just pull completed sheets out if you see something on sale).
(2)    It will help you if you constantly forget (which one likes Rocky Road Ice Cream?).
(3)    It will help you plan little surprises along the way (which helps your child feel like you are thinking of him or her-because you are!).
(4)    It will help you get to know your child better.

Here are some tips for using it/implementing it: 

(1)    Have a family night in which everybody fills in all or part of it. (Since it is long, you could have them do the even questions one family night and the odd questions another family night.)

a.    Plan some things/foods, etc., that you THINK are kids’ faves … and after they turn in their sheets, tell them what you made and whose favorite you thought it was. (This is eye opening!)

b. Pass around the papers and have everybody fill them in (or half of them). We liked to do this type of thing while we listened to audio/radio dramas or fun music. Try to keep the kids from discussing as they are writing.

c. Have Mom or Dad collect them and read some answers here and there (depending on time available) and have people guess who wrote that. (This is eye opening too!)

d. Have the snacks you bought or prepared and vote on a family movie or play a family game.

(2)    Meet one on one with each child and fill it in with him or her. This helps the ones who can’t think of anything at the time since you are there to prompt them. This is especially good for younger kids or weak writers.
(3)    Make copies! Things get lost easily, and you want your kids to feel like this is important to you.
(4)    Be sure you tell them that you want to have this list to surprise them or for gift buying, etc., but tone it down a little if your kids are extremely thing-driven or have high expectations that you are ALWAYS bringing them home a Starbucks, etc. (Honestly, this works better with kids who are not over-indulged already.)
(5)    You can always get the lists out and use for dinner time discussions too. For example, “Let’s see if we can guess what Johnny’s favorite movie is,” etc. Or “I’m going to read the favorite candies lines, and we will guess whose page we think that is.” This is also a good way to help the kids focus on siblings and not just themselves.
(6)    Type this, print it, and keep each one in your purse or billfold (or scan it/take a picture of it, and store it on your phone). You want to have it at your fingertips.

Enter your email below to get the newsletter and the Kid’s Faves list for free!

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While big goals are important, it gives you more momentum and more success in the long run if you start working on the dailies first. Be successful in these, and you can succeed in anything!

Get this planner FREE (during the month of January) by signing up for our blog or newsletter!  It will arrive with your Freebie Friday download 🙂

The Simplified Planner (Or any planner you lay out in a simplified manner that works for you!)

A. Daily Duties—create this by categories for more efficiency and ease of use
B. Weekly Worksheets Using the ABC Approach to Prioritizing (also by categories)
C. Monthly Memos—big picture notes for that month
D. Using Your Monthly Calendar
E. The Terrible Task List

Other Planning Tools
A. Kids’ Daily Chore Charts
B. Kids’ Daily Independent Work (for homeschoolers)
C. Your Block (or moment-by-moment) School Schedule/To Do List

LINKS to Other Podcast Episodes and Blog Posts:

 
Podcast: Overcoming Parenting Obstacles
Podcast: Tips for Efficiency
Podcast: 5 Tips To Be More Efficient In The Kitchen
Podcast: Becoming An Efficiency Expert in Your Home
Podcast: How Do I Get My Children To See Work At Home In A Positive Light?
Podcast: Simplified Meal Planning
Podcast: From Chaos to Control, From Rowdy to Routine
Podcast: Children and Chores

Blog Posts: Independent Work Lists
Blog Posts: Chore Schedules
Blog Post: The Terrible Task List
Blog Post: Dishes, Laundry, and Trash—Twice A Day!

Listen to the podcast here!

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