Thirty years ago, Ray’s mentor said, “Sit down with Donna every week and ask her, ‘What change do you think we need to make? What do you need for me to do?'”

He continued, “After you do this for a long time, it will give Donna peace, and she will feel secure that you really care about your family and how to improve it.

He said, “Then one day, you will ask her ‘What do you need for me to do for you?’ and she will say ‘Nothing at all. What can I do for you?'”

Well, that time of my saying “nothing at all” has never happened yet in over thirty years! 😉

But he was right about part of it: the peace and security that come from knowing for over thirty years that my husband wants good things for our family as badly as I do is incomprehensible.

A change a week times fifty weeks a year times thirty-plus years–equals a lot of change. Granted, we didn’t do this every single week of our lives. But even if we made a change a month for thirty years….

Twelve months times thirty years equals 360 positive changes. That is 360 opportunities to make our family stronger. It is 360 times to solve problems. It is 360 situations to improve.

It is 360 painless times to say, “We can do this. We can make changes in this area, and we can make this month better in our home than last month!”

You see memes on Facebook and other places all the time that read something like one of the following:

1. Just do it! The time is going to pass whether you do it (a fitness activity, usually) or not, so you may as well have a good change being made as the time passes!

2. Make the change (again, usually fitness-related). Sixty days from now (or whatever), you will look back if you do it, and be glad you did. If you didn’t do it, you won’t look back and be glad you didn’t!

And so it is with family changes. We all have things to work on in our homes. We need to tweak the schedule so that things run more smoothly. We need to discipline a child differently so that the child’s behavior is changed. We need to remove so much fun or add more fun in. We need to drop things for our lives to have time to spend on/with a certain child at a certain time. We need to take our focus off of one thing and put it on another until a skill is learned. And on and on and on.

However, those many changes can feel overwhelming when we look at them all at once. (I used to make “Master Changes Lists,” so I know what I’m talking about here!)

But what if we didn’t have a “Master Changes List,” but instead we just looked at this week, this moment in time, and we decided to do one thing to improve our family….and what if we really carried out the steps necessary to make the change? And what if once we got that change down pat, we took on another problem area and solved it–and again really did what it took to make it better?

Now that doesn’t feel overwhelming at all–and not only does it not feel overwhelming, but it also feels good–and doable.

We are talking on the Facebook page about how my husband and I kept going–NOT GIVING UP week after week, month after month for thirty years of parenting so far. This is one of the things that kept us going–knowing that we had the ability to change things that were not working in our homes–but also knowing that we didn’t have to do everything all at once.

You can do this! You can have the family life that you want. You can discipline your children properly and in love. You can raise children who have the character of Christ—not perfect, mind you, but virtues in their lives that you know the Lord wants for them. You can have fun in your home, have organization, and develop deep relationships with your children…

…one change at a time…facing one thing today and another thing in another week or month…because even a change a month times twelve months a year equals a lot of change…

The post A Change a Week—or a Change a Month appeared first on Character Ink.

So now that you are convinced that “delighting in the dailies” will help you accomplish your goals, how do you get them started (and keep them going) during the initial stages—when there isn’t a lot of fruit to show for your efforts, and you are convinced some day that you should just forget making dinner and go play solitaire or buy some sort of farm equipment (on the computer…lol)?

Here are some tips for learning to truly “delight in the dailies” and make those dailies a long-term reality in your home:

1. Start out with a few of the very most important dailies—and make these things happen every day for a couple of weeks.

(See “Delighting in the Dailies—Part I of II” here.)

Don’t make a huge dailies list and wake up on Monday morning assuming that the magic list will all happen on that day. At times, my “dailies” (not including the children’s daily chores) could be thirty tasks long. If you are not used to doing certain things every day, this can be very overwhelming.

There are two ways to start tackling your dailies (which will eventually lead to your delighting in them):

a. Start with the four or five most important dailies for yourself and one or two per child and tackle these. Attach them to something that you already do every day (get up in the morning, eat breakfast, eat lunch, etc.). And start carrying them out over and over again. Once this is going well, add more. See my post about making a change a week or a change a month here.

b. Start with the first thing in the morning—and do your morning dailies only (for everyone in the family). (You might do others, but focus on making sure the morning ones are done consistently.) I often give the advice that when you want to change the way your days are going, start with the first hour of the day. Get this hour looking exactly like you want it to look (constantly!). Then move on to the next hour, etc. I personally like this approach because I love to make my day great by getting my morning started right.

2. Find someone who “delights in her dailies” and get a vision for this way of life from her.

Believe it or not, I actually knew several moms (either in person or through seminars/conventions) who were “delighting in their dailies” as many as thirty years ago! And this prompted me to make this a way of life. I could see the fruit of their daily disciplines, and I wanted that in my home as well. A well-run home is a beautiful thing, and we older moms need to teach and help younger moms learn these vital skills.

3. Believe in the daily approach to life.

Additionally, as an incremental type of teacher, I knew that “precept upon precept” and “line upon line” was the way that my children would master their subjects—and that incremental learning comes through dailies. I also knew from past experience that skipping things that needed done all the time in favor of things that either didn’t HAVE to be done or things that needed done less frequently didn’t work.

I had to believe in this approach in order to really carry it out. If you are waning in your ability to carry this out, make a list of all of the benefits to doing the dailies on your list (i.e. new reader will blossom through daily reading aloud to Mom, no more five o’clock scrambles for dinner, etc.). Pull this list out to help you “believe” when your faith is weak (and, once again, Farmville is calling!).

4. Notice the fruit (the real fruit!).

After a very short while, you will notice that something (or more than one thing) you have developed as a daily in your life is REALLY benefiting your family. Note this! If your struggling mathematician suddenly knows his x8’s because math drill became a daily for him, you have some juicy fruit! If your husband happily puts on his clean dress shirts in the morning (instead of the former morning clothing scramble!), then you have fruit. If you don’t dread four o’clock any more but actually sit down and read online articles for a while until sweet angels wake up from their naps, you have an entire fruit bowl! Notice it. Enjoy it. And realize that this fruit is there because you learned to delight in your dailies.

5. Believe that these dailies are truly the most important parts of your ministry to your family right now.

Anybody can swoop in and be a hero once or do something big here and there—and those have the potential to be ministries to your family too. However, when we understand and truly believe that what we do when we get up first thing in the morning is truly a ministry to our family, we will look at our dalies differently.

I know there are entire books written about the ministry of magic of motherhood. And they are right. But we have to do more than believe it in theory. We have to have it deep within us that when we consistently cook with our ten year old every day for lunch, we are doing God’s work. We have to breathe it in, take it in, and know it at that moment. When we lie down at the end of the day, we have to feel, believe, and KNOW that we have fulfilled an amazing calling on our life that day—because we did our dailies, God’s task list for us at this time in our lives.

6. Realize that you have accomplished a great thing.

Have you ever heard about the research for mastery in life? Some studies show that it takes repeating an action ten thousand times to become accomplished in it. Just look at each time that you do something (plan the next meal, do a reading lesson with a child, reach out to your preteen’s heart) as a step towards mastery. It really works. You will become so good at the things that you do over and over and over again!

It is rare to find a “work-at-home” mom who can juggle really well. How many times have you personally heard someone say that she could never do what you are doing—that she couldn’t spend all day with her kids or that she wouldn’t have the motivation that you have or that she can’t get organized without the structure of employment? What we are trying to do here—manage a home well, educate our children, and spend all day every day with kids—is not easy to do. If you continue to improve yourself as a home manager and a homeschooler, year after year, you will get more and more accomplished—and you will soon realize that you have done something very rare and very great.

7. But don’t get smug! 🙂

After delighting in your dailies for a while, and continuing to add more and more important dailies into your life, you will be amazed at the skills you have. Bask in that. It is such a great feeling to delight in your dailies. Such an awesome peace that comes with knowing that you are doing—day in and day out—what you are supposed to be doing. Actually, this feeling alone is enough to keep you going. (While I don’t advocate in living on feelings, there is a calm and peace that comes with doing what you are supposed to be doing—and THAT is a great feeling!) So enjoy it…but don’t be smug! Soon there will be someone else who wants you to help her learn to “delight in her dailies”—and you will be just the gal to do it!

In the meantime, here are some places to learn more about my beloved “Dailies”:

1) Short blog post: Dishes, Trash, Laundry Twice a Day

2) Short blog post on “after the Dailies”: Timely Tasks & ABC Weeklies

3) Video With Outline: Following Through on the Dailies

4) Video With Outline–How I Found My Dailies

Hope these help! Blessings to you as you seek to prioritize your life, school, and home!

The post Delighting in the Dailies—Part II of II appeared first on Character Ink.

If you have heard us speak or read any of our blogs, you have probably heard my stories about how I used to be a “closet lady.” That is, I always cleaned out closets, organized toy cubes, shelved books in order, and made one hundred freezer meals in one day—instead of doing the dishes, laundry, trash, and other “dailies.”

It took me a while as a young mother to get to the point where I could set all of my projects aside—all of the more “creative,” fun, and cool things–in order to do the things that I needed to every day….the dailies.

But once I did, my life was forever changed. You see, it is the daily ins and outs that truly make us successful in homeschooling (and in life!).

Stop and think for a moment about successful businesses. Every day a successful business has multiple lists of things that are done by various departments every single day.   They have checks and balances in place to ensure that these dailies are done consistently. The people responsible for these dailies don’t branch out and do grandiose tasks or launch new projects. The daily people do the dailies—because without the dailies no great idea or new product really matters.

While homeschooling mamas do not usually have someone to take care of the dailies for us so that we can do the “grandiose” (if you do, power to you!), we still need to do those dailies in order to be successful.

What constitutes a daily? For me, a daily was anything in the home that needed done every day—either by me or by someone else. At various times, this could include any or all of the following: dishes, trash, and laundry (see my posts about never getting behind on these again!); morning decisions for evening meal (with some preps if needed); morning routines by all; reading with a new reader; writing with a new writer; Bible memory recitations; morning read alouds; two chore sessions; and more.

Some days, throughout my thirty years of homeschooling, my dailies felt heavy and overwhelming (and never-ending because they truly are!); however, more often than not, they made me feel successful. It didn’t matter what else I got done on any given day. It didn’t matter how many projects were left undone. It didn’t matter how accomplished I was (or wasn’t!) in other areas. Because I did something that is extremely difficult: I did my dailies.

And guess what? Not only did I do them, day in and day out. But I also got good at them! Talk about feeling super successful.

I got up, nearly every morning(!), and did what I needed to do in order to manage a large family, homeschool several children, live a Christian life, and keep a wonderful marriage going strong. Sometimes I even did other things—but, like I mentioned above, it didn’t matter if I didn’t.

Dailies are the building blocks to success. They are the things that feed a family, keep a home in order, build strong readers, instill Christian virtues in our kids, and more. They yield amazing results—over a period of time—without our even realizing that they are doing so.

After a while, I learned to Delight in These Dailies (due to the feeling of achievement and the success they brought about in our home). After a while longer, I taught my children to Delight in the Dailies (which have led to their success as adults today!). And now I am teaching you! 🙂

How do you learn to delight in the dailies when you are first starting to make these tasks priorities in your life? Stay with me! Next week, I will give you some tips in how to Delight in the Dailies!

In the meantime, here are some places to learn more about my beloved “Dailies”:

1) Short blog post: Dishes, Trash, Laundry Twice a Day

2) Short blog post on “after the Dailies”: Timely Tasks & ABC Weeklies

3) Video With Outline: Following Through on the Dailies

4) Video With Outline–How I Found My Dailies

Hope these help! Blessings to you as you seek to prioritize your life, school, and home!

The post Delighting in the Dailies–Part I of II appeared first on Character Ink.

We would love to come to your area with our Homeschooling With Character parenting seminar. This seminar is flexible to meet the needs of homeschool groups everywhere. Here are some details for you:

1. The seminar can be sponsored by a church, Sunday school, small group, community, homeschool group, support group, field trip group, state homeschool organization, etc. It is for any group of homeschoolers who want to learn about character-focused parenting from birth to tweens—with a special emphasis on the homeschooling lifestyle. (See our tween and teen workshop list here.)

Note: We also offer our Raising Kids With Character seminar, which has many of the same sessions but does not focus on homeschooling families only. It addresses Christian parenting regardless of schooling scenarios. Many homeschooling groups sponsor that seminar so that they can invite their non-homeschooling friends as well. (Another option is to offer the Raising Kids With Character seminar but Friday during the day (or Thursday evening) have us present homeschooling workshops only (such as writing or managing your homeschool day or any of our sixty-plus homeschooling workshops.)

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 or other homeschooling topics during the day on Friday (my personal favorite because in this arrangement 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.

Click below to see lists of topics that we speak on at our seminars, and contact us here to set one up!

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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.

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 arrangement 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 here, along with potential schedules.)

To set up a seminar,  contact us here!

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Donna Reish, from Character Ink publishing and Raising Kids With Character, answers parents’ questions about children and chores. Donna introduces some foundational diligence training tips that have helped her in her home management for over twenty-five years. She then introduces toddlers and preschoolers habits and chores and then branches out chore sessions, dividing up chores, paying for chores, and much more!

Click here to download the printable handout.

Subscribe to our Wondering Wednesday podcasts in iTunes.

The post Wondering Wednesday: Children & Chores appeared first on Character Ink.

Twenty-five years ago when I was a young mother, housewife, and homeschooler, I had trouble getting all of my work done every day–while teaching a young son to read, keeping a curious preschooler out of everything, taking care of a toddler, nursing a baby, etc. Truly the statement “the days are long but the years are short” was never more real to me.

I had problems that many people who are “self employed” have–plus the added “benefits” of having a lot of littles around making messes and needing seemingly-constant attention. (I really do think they are benefits–but when a man is self-employed, he usually doesn’t have to take care of a home, feed a crew, and provide constant care and supervision to little kids! He just, well, works!)

The greatest problem that those of us who are self employed and/or homeschoolers and/or housewives with littles is that of prioritizing. The second greatest is motivation. Why clean this up when it is just going to become a mess again in thirty minutes? Why fix a hot meal….three hours later, I will need to start another hot meal!

I have found many ways to get the motivation needed to make it through those days of many littles and lots of homeschooling needs–but that would take a book to explain, so for today, I would like to address the concept of prioritizing.

When I had little kids, I loved creating systems–toy storage systems, closet organization, bookshelf perfection. These were things, however, that should not have been high on the priority list. The priority list needed to include daily work, like dishes, laundry, meal preps, child cleansing, reading lessons, and unit studies. Not systems!

My husband would come home at the end of the work day, and I would take him by the hand and lead him through the house, making a path through clean laundry, unbathed children in pj’s, and stacks of dishes, to show him the toy shelves with all of the toys sorted into baby wipe containers with picture labels on each shelf so that the kids could put the toys onto the right shelves. It didn’t even dawn on me that I should have done dishes and laundry BEFORE doing those amazing toy shelves.

After he saw my prize-winning shelves, Ray would roll up his sleeves (literally) and dig in to help bail me out from my day of misplaced priorities. We would get the dishes and laundry done; he would call me “closet lady” –and then we would often repeat the cycle again in a few days. 

As we added more children to our home (and more kids in school), it became obvious that I could not continue to put contact paper on every box that came in the house and hand make labels with bright magic markers. Something had to give–and it was then that I came up with the solution to all of our laundry and dish (and trash!) problems:

Treat laundry, dishes, and trash just like brushing my teeth. I brush my teeth at least twice a day (sometimes three or four if I eat something spicy or I am going out in the evening). And I began doing the same with dishes, laundry, and trash. 

We still adhere to the below schedule twenty-five years later–though I have seldom done this daily work once the two oldest children could handle these tasks, about ages ten and seven–the youngest child or two of the family who can handle the work has always done the daily tasks (so that we more, um, accomplished kids and parents can do harder jobs, like cooking, shopping, cleaning out freezers, weekly bathroom cleaning, discipling teens, mentoring young adults, teaching fractions, organizing closets (!), etc.).


                    TWICE A DAY LAUNDRY, DISHES, and TRASH TASKS

Bedtime: (1) Run the dishes from the evening in the dishwasher

 (2) Put laundry from earlier in the dryer (“fold ups” only; we have always done hang ups in the moment, moving it before it spins out and hanging it up when it is nearly dry so that we don’t have to iron)

3) Start another load in the washer before sleeping

Morning: (1) Unload dishwasher and put away any big dishes that were drying on the counter after last night’s dinner

(2) Fold and put away laundry in the dryer

(3) Move washer load from washer to dryer and dry it

(4) Gather trash all over the house in the big bag out of the kitchen trash can and take it all out; replace bag

Noontime: (1) Do second load of laundry in dryer (fold and put away)

(2) Start tonight’s first load of laundry in washer

(3) Load dishes from breakfast, lunch, snacks, and cooking and run dishwasher

Evening chores: (1) Unload daytime dishes

(2) Load dinner and dinner prep dishes

(3) Bag kitchen trash again and take it out (we only gather from everywhere else once a day, in the morning)

This assumes chore sessions are in place. Even if you do not have good chore sessions right now, you can start with a five minute session before or after each meal and get laundry and dishes done then (even if it is just you doing them). Four five minute sessions can keep everything up if you have a dishwasher. (Note that we do a load or two of “hang ups” in another chore session in addition to that twice-daily laundry schedule. “Hang up” laundry is a weekly chore, separate from the daily laundry.)

When I didn’t have a dishwasher, I still kept this same routine, but I just kept hot sudsy water in the sink all day (reviving it as needed) and washed dishes and put them in the drying rack as I had them, definitely at least after each meal, but I (or a child) would often run out and wash a sinkful here and there.

Doesn’t TWICE A DAY for each chore (fully done–trash, laundry, and dishes) and twenty total minutes of work a day sound completely doable??? It is! You can do this!

Twice a day–just like brushing your teeth!

The post Laundry, Dishes, Trash–Twice a Day Forever! appeared first on Character Ink.

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The post Efficiency—’As Easy As ABC, 123, Do-Re-Mi, Baby—You and Me’ appeared first on Character Ink.

Take a look at what we do below—and contact us to learn more!

“Raising Kids With Character” Christian parenting seminar—available in four, six, eight, or ten session formats! For churches, parenting classes, homeschool groups, conventions, and more!

Ray and Donna enjoy helping homeschoolers with parenting, marriage, homeschooling, language arts, writing, family life, and more!

Ray, Donna, and Joshua enjoy speaking to groups at homeschooling conventions and have over fifty topics to choose from, including fathers, mothers, parenting from toddlers to teens, character training, how to teach (reading, writing, English, speech, debate, history, literature, and more), study skills, home management, marriage, reaching your children’s hearts, organizing, and much more!

Donna explains her three writing and language arts programs at homeschool conventions: Character Quality Language Arts, Meaningful Composition, and Really Writing (ebooks–coming out fall/winter 2014/2015).

Ray and Donna enjoy speaking together in their “Raising Kids With Character” parenting seminar (for Christian parents) as well as at homeschooling conventions and their homeschooling workshops.

Ray and Donna Reish, directors and founders of Character Ink, write, speak, and teach at their “cottage classes” to test Donna’s books, parenting seminars, small groups, and homeschooling workshops.

Joshua enjoys writing new Meaningful Composition books with Donna, teaching over one hundred “cottage class” students each semester, and speaking at homeschooling conventions with his parents or on his own. Check out his speaking topics and cottage class offerings!

Ray and Donna enjoy helping parents raise and reach the hearts of their teens in their homeschooling workshops (“Reaching the Heart of Your Teen,” “Homeschooling Through High School,” “What Your Teen Needs From You,” “What Your Wife and Children Need,” and more!) as well as in their “Raising Kids With Character” parenting seminar (non-homeschool-specific or homeschool-specific version).

Meaningful Composition, our composition-only Christian writing series, covers grades two through twelve (see specific titles for availability) and teaches students how to write using Character Ink’s “Directed Writing Approach.” Check out our two week samples to see how your student can learn to write well—and enjoy the process!

Character Ink’s writing methods, from our “Directed Writing Approach” to our signature “Checklist Challenge” for editing papers to our “Overview Source Method” for research writing, will have your student writing amazing papers in no time! Check out our Character Quality Language Arts samples, our Meaningful Composition samples, and our new Really Writing ebooks (non-religious shorter writing books)!

Our Christian parenting book, The Well-Trained Heart, explains how we discovered a heart-training method for raising children, while instilling character qualities into their lives. Check out our first chapter!

Character Quality Language Arts (CQLA) is our anchor homeschool product. Four levels of books, covering grades two through twelve, each 1200 to 1500 page work-text provides all of your student’s language arts needs (copy work, vocabulary, spelling, editing, outlining, writing, grammar, usage, dictation, and more) in one book!

Ray and Donna love to speak to married couples about the parallels of ballroom dancing and marriage in their sessions called “Dancing With Your Star–Insights From the Dance of the Ballroom to the Dance of Marriage”!

Students engage in lively discussions in many of Joshua’s “cottage classes,” including literature, world history, US history, economics, government, apologetics, speech, and debate.

In Character Ink’s “Cottage Classes,” Ray, Donna, and their assistants teach up to two hundred students in four locations each semester—from complete CQLA classes (all language arts) to writing to high school sciences and many high school social studies (taught by Joshua with his own syllabus and materials). Check out the class descriptions and registrations forms for upcoming classes!

Character Ink materials use our signature “Directed Writing Approach” method for teaching writing. No more questions about what to write, how to write, or when to write. From Brainstorming Boxes through our Checklist Challenge, we leave nothing to chance when it comes to teaching students how to write!

Contact us to enroll students in cottage classes; order our products; book a speaker for your event; or host a parenting or language arts/writing seminar!

Character Ink

11120 Aboite Center Road0-450-

Fort Wayne, IN 46814

260 450 7063

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