August and September Themes

I am always thinking about what I am teaching my children, or what I want to be teaching my children. I have done fun monthly themes on the back of our front door for years, but it’s been sporadic and mostly last minute. I have now organized this so that it will happen every month. I came up with a list of values that I want to teach my children (Acceptance, Charity, Courage, Commitment, Compassion, Dreaming, Empathy, Freedom, Family, Generosity, Gratitude, Hard Work, Honesty, Joy, Love, Patience, Respect, Responsibility, Self Control, etc ).

Every month I will put up our monthly theme. It’s basically a bulletin board like teachers do in their classrooms. I have a blank wall in my playroom that is the perfect place for this. I want these bulletin boards to be interactive.

For August, I wanted to reinforce to my children that we are kind to one another, especially within our family. So, we are building a school house together. Each time I catch one of them doing something great with their siblings (sharing, etc) that child gets to go and pick a block (from a pocket on the wall, by the theme). One by one we are putting the blocks together to form the above school house. Each block has a reward on the back of it (they don’t get to pick which reward they want). These are all free things such as “A Book To Be Read By Mom”. At the end, we will put the school door on as the last piece. This reward is the biggest one and we will have earned it as a family. It is to go out to eat together (a request my children have been asking for).

For September I am going with the saying, “Picking Our Outlook”. Since it is back to school time and autumn I thought this was the perfect bulletin board. Each child will pick an apple each day and write something they are looking forward to this year. Some examples are, “Playing with my school friends, field trips, learning how to read, etc”. I will be doing a theme of Gratitude in November, so it is not things we are thankful for. It is instead supposed to be helping my children to be happy about what is to come, and to remember all the wonderful things that are coming their way this next school year. I am forever telling my children that it’s their choice if they are happy or not. Hopefully this helps them to see why they should be “picking” to be happy.

Each month I will be doing another theme and I will post it here. I will do them ahead of time to give you time to do up something similar, if you want to.

What are themes that you would like to see? What are themes you have used with your children?

Rebecca