That Reminds Me

found at Amazon
 

That Reminds Me by Jean Brown Eittreim is a great little book filled with 200 story-starters for passing on your faith.  I have pulled it out at dinner times, holidays, vacations, visits with grandparents, bedtime or tea time.  Sometimes all we need are some prompts to help us share what is important or has shaped our faith.  I could only find it for Kindle on Amazon right now, but that works - especially if you have Kindle on your phone like I do.

Tell Me a Childhood Story

Almost every day my daughter asks me to tell her a childhood story.  Today we were driving in Rocky Mountain National Park and she says, "Tell me a childhood story in the mountains."  Of course, I've told her this story before because when I was little I only went to the mountains one time. 

I've always told my kids stories about when I was growing up, and it seems to give them comfort.  Comfort knowing that I made mistakes just like they do.  Comfort knowing I remember and maybe understand what it's like to be 9 years old.  Stories are a chance to teach lessons we've learned so maybe they don't have to learn the same way.  Stories can just be fun.  Sometimes when my daughter has a hard day or something funny that has happened to her she will say, "Now I have a story to tell my kids."  I love that!

I love childhood stories.  I guess because at heart I am still the same person I was at 10 years old or 16 years old or 4 years old.  And I love to hear other people's stories, especially those that I love.

Do you tell family stories?  Do you write them down?  Scrapbook?  Keep a journal? 

I will be writing about telling our stories and creating keepsake stories at my other site Tell Me a Childhood Story.  I will share story prompts, some of my story projects, ways to publish or make keepsakes, and more.  I hope you'll visit me there.

Write a family hymn of Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving hymns.  In fact, the next couple of days I will be posting several Thanksgiving hymns. 

But another idea I wanted to try this year is to write a family hymn of Thanksgiving.  We did this about 10 years ago with my mom when my oldest two were little.  We used the hymn When Morning Gilds the Skies, or as we called it, May Jesus Christ Be Praised.  It is very simple and easy to write your own family verses.  I think we will try that same hymn again, each of us writing a verse.  I wish I could find the copy of what we wrote years ago.  I know it's somewhere in some keepsake box.

Anyway, here's a copy of the first verse to give an idea of how to write a family verse:

When morning gilds the skies my heart awaking cries:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Alike at work and prayer, to Jesus I repair:
May Jesus Christ be praised!
When you begin the day, O never fail to say,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
And at your work rejoice, to sing with heart and voice,
May Jesus Christ be praised!

Here's a try:

When Mommy says her prayers and gives to God her cares,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
When daddy tucks in bed and with his kids prayers said,
May Jesus Christ be praised!

When friends come to our home and we are not alone,
May Jesus Christ be praised.
Our table's full of food and all in a good mood,
May Jesus Christ be praised.

My mom likes to write her own verses to hymns on a somewhat regular basis, and she shares them with the family.  Maybe someday I will do that too to express my faith and love for God and what he shows me in this life.

Linked with: Works for Me Wednesday, Raising Homemakers, Miscellany Monday, The Better Mom, Beauty in His Grip, On Your Heart Tuesdays, Mommy Link-up!, Women Living Well, Hip Homeschool Hop, Flock Together Tuesday, Thankful Thursday, Winsome Wednesday, Courtship Connection, and Gratituesday.

Ten Homeschool Writing Ideas/Links

I love to write, and I like to encourage my kids to write.  So, I get excited to find sites that make writing fun and memorable for the kids, that give helpful hints or writing prompts, or that provide ways to share children's writing with others or treasure as keepsakes.  Here's some of the Links I Like:

1.  Tikatok - a website where parents and their children can write, illustrate, and publish their original stories into professional-quality hardcover and paperback books or eBooks.

2.  Story Jumper - their mission is for every child to feel the joy and excitement of publishing their very own book.

3.  In our Write Minds, WriteShop blog

4.  SmallWorld's Wordsmithery - fun writing lessons

5.  Free Writing prompts:  Heart of Wisdom,  The Write Source, 346 Creative Writing prompts, the Teacher's Corner, and Writing Bug.  I am sure there are more.

6.  5 Educational Uses for Photo Books

7.  Rory's Story Cubes

8.  National Novel Writing workbooks - free downloads

9.  Homemade Bookmaking  :  Making Books, Let's Make Books, and  Let's Explore Bookmaking

10.  All About Me scrapbooking - All About Me journaling prompts

Linked with Top Ten Tuesday, Family Time Tuesday, Works for Me Wednesday, Women Living Well, Raising Homemakers, Winsome Wednesday, Miscellany Monday, and Better Mom.

Mixbooking it!

This month I am Mixbooking it with Mixbook.com at home and at Panera - creating memory story books.  It's one of my goals to actually get started on this year.  Mara is creating a recipe book too.

I have boxes of photos, photo albums, keepsakes and scrapbook boxes.  I want to make books from all of these.  There's so many I want to make:  for each of the kids school and growing up years, my childhood, my Granny's resume (as she calls her life memories), vacations, adoptions, etc.  Where do I start?  I am kind of a perfectionist when it comes to this kind of thing.  I am trying to get over this because it has been holding me back.  I am going to work on some of Kyle's memory books since he will be graduating this year.

That's all past memory keeping.  Then there's this year, here and now.  Can I start figuring out how I want to move forward in keeping memories so that I don't always have to play catch up? 

I have been reading about Project Life, but that doesn't feel like me.  I am not a traditional scrapbooker either.  I do like storybooks and journals.  I might try making some bound digital books with extra blank pages at the end to hand write some notes.  I think the most important thing I can do is get started!

I will be writing another post on what I hope to do with all the keepsakes and projects that don't fit into memory books.

How do you keep memories?





Linked with Tackle it Tuesday.

Memory Keeping/Giving

I love memory keeping! I have so many projects on my "hope to do soon" list. Last month I enjoyed following a 31 days series on memory keeping that I wanted to share.  Maybe it will inspire you too!  My oldest is getting ready to graduate this year - the time has gone so fast!  I plan to make a school memories book for him.  I also plan to start making family yearbooks and going back through the past years to put together books as well. 

I am hoping/planning to make this a priority, especially after the first of the year.  I'll share my progress along the way, and any good ideas I find - or come up with myself.  Please share any helpful tips that you have too!  I wish I was ready to take advantage of all the specials on photobooks and calendars right now.  I will try to post some specials I find in upcoming posts. 

Here's the link to the series I mentioned:

Scrapbook Storytelling

Right now I am taking a class on journaling to renew my teaching certificate. It's on how to use journaling as a teacher and with your students. One of the books that was recommended was Scrapbook Storytelling. I have really enjoyed it. I got it from the library and it is pretty inspiring for my education class. Journaling as a teacher helps you to reflect on your students and where they are with their learning and what is working and not working. When students journal it helps them to reflect on their own learning and preserve it some format.


The same is true as we parent our children and preserve our memories and values and what matters most. We also can choose which stories we want to capture and share - a wonderful gift for our children and ourselves. I guess I've always wanted to be able to hold on to some of the little bits of heaven that God gives us here on earth and most importantly try to be able to see God in every moment.

More and more I am living my life in complete amazement of God's goodness! It's especially in all the little things each day. I've been thinking about trying to start writing more of them down. Today I praise God for summer! It's hot, and we so wanted to have summer! I also thank him for helping my daughter Lila during her big sister's campout. She has a hard time with so many big girls in the house, but she was pleasant - so we are off to buy her a wig. Yes a wig. She likes wigs of colored hair to wear for fun.

Journaling

I just received my grade in the mail today from a class I was taking to renew my teaching certificate. It was on journaling - keeping a Teacher's Journal as well as using journaling with your students. I loved it! Besides reading Scrapbook Storytelling, I also read Educating Esme. Both were good. My project was to keep a Teacher's Reflective Journal. I found it to be a great benefit to reflect on our school days and keep a record of our year. It helped me set goals and to be accountable to them. Plus, as I add pictures to the journal, it makes an excellent record/yearbook of our school year.

For fun I've been reading Pages of Faith, about faithbooking. I'm getting ready to start writing Lila's Story of her adoption, and I want to include how God led us through her adoption process. I want her to know that God built our family. One of my favorite authors, Catherine Marshall, wrote a book about her life called Meeting God at Every Turn. I hope to write more family stories after Lila's, and I want them all to tell God's story of our lives.

Anyway, I signed up with Cherish Bound as a way to publish these stories and to have multiple copies for the kids. I'm looking forward to having a hardbound copy of our stories as part of sharing our faith and passing down some stories. Another reason I like Cherish Bound is all the story starters they offer to help you write your stories, including one on adoption. My goal is to get Lila's done for Christmas.