I was sitting down to write this newsletter and my son called upstairs, “Mom! I need help.” Next time I sat down, my daughter called, “Mom, do you want to play a game?” Then I sat down and the doorbell rang. I won’t be surprised if I’m interrupted again before I finish this sentence.
I’ll admit that I hesitated in answering these interruptions, but then I remembered that the interruptions were actually opportunities. It’s easy to be frustrated by these times when you have one thing that you want to do and your child takes that moment to want to spend time together. When this happens, remember that these minutes spent with your child could be the most important minutes you spend in a day. Connections between parents and children are so important that they shape us for the rest of our lives, as does the lack of connection if we decide to ignore the opportunities given to us.
Summer can be a hard time to navigate, whether you are home with your kids, or spending time after work together. It can also be a great time to start a new family tradition, like reading together every day. I even set up a 30 day encouraging newsletter to help you start and continue with a reading habit for 30 days. While your kids are trying to earn library reading rewards or just to keep them reading all summer long, reading aloud together as a family is a big boost in helping build their literacy skills. The most important thing (better than literacy, vocabulary, and good grades) is that reading together as a family will bond you together, making your family stronger.
I made it this far before I got another call from my child! Yay, summer. I am so thankful for the sunshine and the children running around my backyard.
Here’s a few more summer resources for your family:
Updates:
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- How I Self-Published a Picture Book: Costs, Tools, and Lessons Learned
- The Weight of Parenting as a Christian
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This nearly wordless companion to the Caldecott Medal-winning The Lion & the Mouse is Jerry Pinkney’s most stunning masterpiece yet. Even the slowest tortoise can defeat the quickest hare, and even the proudest hare can learn a timeless lesson from the most humble tortoise: Slow and steady wins the race! Here is a superbly rendered journey from starting line to finish that embodies the bravery, perseverance, and humility we can all find inside ourselves.
My Take: My son and I enjoyed reading this book together. It has very few words (slow and steady wins the race), but the pictures tell the story beautifully. I love all the animal’s personalities, and the lush southwest landscapes. This is a good book to try if you are interested in trying wordless picture books. The illustrations are all beautiful, and the ending is nice because the hare congratulates the tortoise instead of being a sore sport.
Chapter Book:
Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder ↗
The second book in the treasured Little House series, Farmer Boy is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved story of how her husband, Almanzo, grew up as a farmer boy far from the little house where Laura lived.
While Laura Ingalls grows up on the prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State. Here Almanzo and his brother and sisters help with the summer planting and fall harvest. In winter there is wood to be chopped and great slabs of ice to be cut from the river and stored. Time for fun comes when the jolly tin peddler visits, or best of all, when the fair comes to town.
Almanzo wishes for just one thing—his very own horse—and he must prove that he is ready for such a big responsibility.
My Take: We read through all the Little House on the Prairie books with my daughter, and now we’re starting them again with my son (age 7). While I think the stories of survival and building a life on the frontier are exciting and interesting, this book of the whole series is my favorite. Almanzo is such a hard-working boy with a hearty appetite, and he tries to do what is right. This book also has a wonderful payoff right at the end, which is probably why I love it more than the other books. I love sharing these books with my children because the world has changed so much and been tamed so much that it is so interesting to remember how people lived 150 years ago, how hard they worked to do things we take for granted, like having water to drink, or food to eat. This book demonstrates how much work growing food is, yet how rewarding it is to be a farmer.
Young Adult:
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins ↗
When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?
As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.
Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.
When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.
My Take: If you don’t know, The Hunger Games series is one of my all-time favorites. This book does really well at calling back to the other books without needing the other books for it to make complete sense (except for maybe the ending of the book, which jumps forward in time). Also, because I already know and love Haymitch I was crying at the very first chapter. I was also crying at the end, and various times throughout… have some tissues ready.
Since the other books didn’t say much about Haymitch’s Hunger Games, there are a lot of surprises. I also loved seeing other characters from the other books as they were 26 years previous to Katniss’ Hunger Games.
This book, as do all the Hunger Games books, covers themes of political control, propoganda, and violence.
For you are powerful, not that you may make the weak weaker by oppression, but that you may make them powerful by raising them up and defending them. You are wise, not in order to laugh at the foolish and thereby make them more foolish, but that you may undertake to teach them as you yourself would wish to be taught. You are righteous that you may vindicate and pardon the unrighteous, not that you may only condemn, disparage, judge, and punish. For this is Christ’s example for us, as he says: “For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).
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