How do you spend your weekend?  Are you taking advantage of this time together or scheduling errands and reading blogs? 

You may notice we don’t post much on the weekends on our blogs because we figure people aren’t spending as much time on the computer.  At least that was the reasoning we had… until we realized that we get almost as much traffic from readers on weekend days as weekdays!  What does this mean?

I’m not going to tell you what choices to make, because everyone has different circumstances and priorities in their families.  But today is Sunday, which got me thinking…

I hope you won’t blog as much today.  I hope you won’t do as many chores and errands today.  I hope you’ll take a few minutes for yourself today and spend a few minutes enjoying the togetherness of your family.  Your family is here now, and we never want to take that gift for granted. 

Let us know how you spend your weekends in the comments below.  Have a great Sunday!

If you’re the looking for frugal family activities to keep the kids entertained during summer vacation, then free movies are for you!  You’re sure to enjoy the Regal Cinemas Free Family Film Festival throughout the summer, which starts in many cities this week.

Visit their site here to find listings of the participating Regal Cinemas, United Artists and Edwards movie theatres in your town, as well as family appropriate movies that will be playing, and days and times.

With 300 locations participating, there’s bound to be a  movie theater close to you that’s participating in the free family film festival. 

The free movie schedule last for nine weeks throughout the summer, and shows some of the top new family and kids movies.  All movies are rated G or PG, and most theaters are showing films on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at 10:00am.

Free Movies Showing

Here are some of the free movies that are going to be on the schedule for the Regal Cinemas Free Family Film Festival (movies vary by location): 

• Hotel for Dogs
• Bee Movie (PG)
• Horton Hears A Who (G)
• Madagascar 2: Escape To Africa (PG)
• Inkheart (PG)
• The Tale Of Despereaux (G)
• Kung Fu Panda (PG)
• Shrek the Third
• Everyone’s Hero (G)
• Surf’s Up (PG)
• Igor (PG)
• Journey To The Center Of The Earth (PG)
• Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (G)
• Mr. Bean’s Holiday (G)
• Alvin And The Chipmunks (PG)
• Space Chimps (G)
• Wallace And Gromit (G)
• City Of Ember (PG)

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Is your little bundle of joy now big enough and ready to face the challenges of a preschool?  Your child’s educational future depends a lot on this initial learning stage (whether you teach preschool at home or send them to a preschool outside the home), hence it important that you know how to choose a preschool.

You will first need to write down all your requirements for a preschool with your spouse, especially in terms of schedules, medical and food policies, desired philosophy of teaching, and the maximum distance it can be located from your house or office.

Once you have your list of requirements ready, read through our list of topics and questions to consider below.  These should  help you to have quality information when it’s time to choose a preschool for your child.

How to Choose a Preschool for Your Child

1.  Teacher to Child Ratio.  What is the teacher to child ratio in the preschool? The policy on this ratio may be different across the states. If the ratio is very small, such as 1:3, your child will get a lot of personal attention; however, he or she will have only a limited number of playmates. A higher ratio is fine if the teacher’s aides are utilized and your child will be well looked after.

2.  Toys and Tools.  What are the tools and toys being used by the preschool for teaching? How often are the toys cleaned and how are they maintained?  How often are they replenished?  It is important that the preschool buys the latest puzzles, jigsaws and other such toys which are instrumental in your child’s learning, and is on top of current safety recalls.

3.  Communication.  How will the school communicate with you about the progress for your child and bring up any issues they might be concerned about? Do they want parents to be involved in the teaching process and how? Check the policy of the school; some schools provide a weekly or monthly status, while others have conferences or an open door policy for parents.

4.  Food.  Is food served at the school? If yes, check the menu and decide whether it is nutritional and healthy for your child. If food is not served by the school, then check how they would be handling the food you send for your child. Do they require only cold foods or don’t mind if leftovers needs to be warmed up?

5.  Curriculum.  What are the educational guidelines followed by the school? Do they follow the philosophy such as learning by doing or more traditional learning methods of book learning and instructions? To what extent will your child be allowed to make choices about what to learn and when?

6.  Safety and Illness.  What are the safety and sick child policies of the school? Do they ask the parent to pick up the child when sick in order to prevent other kids from getting sick? Do they have a doctor or nurse handy just in case a child falls ill?

You will get a fair idea how to choose an ideal preschool by answering these questions. Once you have short listed the schools in your area, it’s best to plan a visit to each of these schools.  Talk to the teachers or the director personally, rather than relying on information you collected from other means, and get a feel for if the preschool is a good fit for your child.

Family Friday: Time to Share!

Now it’s time for you to share your Family Friday post with the rest of us!  If you’re not sure how it works, read the directions and guidelines for Family Friday here.

Please add your family-related blog post below in the Mr. Linky. Remember, you MUST link your post back to HomemakerBarbi.com. (If your link was deleted, email us.)

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We’re starting a new weekly feature called Family Friday, which focuses on any topic that is family related. 

Since everything is more fun with friends, we’d like to turn this into a blog carnival, complete with a Mr. Linky, where you can link up your family related blog posts!

Family is a pretty broad topic, so we expect the posts will be a collection of wholesome, family-friendly good reading for all of us to enjoy.  Topics can include family time, family activities, parenting posts, tips or advice, stories/pictures of your children, how you’re celebrating Mother’s Day, fun stuff with kids, craft projects or cooking projects you do together, birth stories… the list goes on and on!

If you’d be interested in linking up in this new blog carnival, Family Friday, please leave a comment below! 

We want to gauge the number of possible participants we’ll have so we know when to start.  Ideally, we’ll be launching the first Family Friday Mr. Linky next Friday, 4/24.  It would be great if you could spread the word by blogging about it, linking to this post, emailing your bloggy friends, or tweeting about it.  Thank you, and we’ll update you if we have to change the launch date!

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8 Ways to Turn a Regular Family Walk into an Adventure Walk

Quality family time doesn’t have to be expensive to be fun.  Simply grab the kids and your jackets to head outdoors for a fun Adventure Walk!  Get exercise, great conversation, fresh air and an opportunity to take in the scenery around you with a casual stroll. A simple family walk can become an “Adventure Walk” by just giving it a new name and a fresh idea.  What child (or adult) can resist an adventure?  Try any of the 8 ways below to turn a plain family walk around the neighborhood into a family Adventure Walk!

1.  Bring containers along to pick berries.  Take advantage of the season if it’s summer or fall and be on the lookout for blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, or whichever berries grow in your locale.  Don’t forget to eat some while you’re picking!

2.  Role play a favorite story, assign characters and dress in costume.  For the creative family, choose a story (say Alice in Wonderland) before you leave the house and assign each family member a character to play.  Dress each member in an appropriate costume (Alice wears a blue dress) and make up your own story/adventure as you walk (Alice goes down the rabbit hole by going down the spiral slide at the park).

3.  Bring gloves and trash bags and have your own clean up day.  Clean up day can be anytime and has a special meaning when your family is dedicated to keeping your own neighborhood clean.  This is a great way to drive home the point to kids (even teens) about why littering is so wrong.  Make sure kids know not to touch sharp objects, such as glass or metal, that may be on the ground. 

4.  Have a scavenger hunt.  Before leaving home, print out a short list of items that can be found in your area, and have kids search for them as you walk and check them off the list.  Fall items could include  pine cones, brown leaves, moss, and flat rocks, just to name a few.  Summertime items could include grass, dandelions, butterflies, etc.  

5.  Go house shopping in your neighborhood.  Look for vacant houses signed for sale, and help the kids join you in looking in the windows.  It’s fun to imagine your family moving into the empty house, where everything would go, who would have which room, etc.  (Make sure the house is really vacant before peering in the windows though!)

6.  Go somewhere you can explore.  Find a place that is out of the way where not many people go.  For example, take your kids to the fairgrounds (after the state fair has packed up and moved on) and observe how different it looks while it is empty.

7.  Take a pedometer and count steps.  Guess how many steps it it around your block and have everyone write down their guesses before you leave. 

8.  Tell funny or embarrassing stories.  Kids love to hear funny or embarrassing stories from their parents’ pasts, and it can even encourage them to open up and tell a few of their own.

Take advantage of your imagination to inject a little excitement into a regular family walk.  Adventure Walks can create great family bonding time that will have your children looking forward to family time!

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng.

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11 Free Family Bonding Activities to Do at Home in 30 Minutes or Less

Have 30 minutes to spare tonight before bedtime?  There are many fun family activities that take 30 minutes or less (or can take longer if you have more time!).  You don’t have to leave the comfort of your own home – or front yard – to have great frugal family fun. These free activities can be thought of as team-building exercises for your family.  Use limited time wisely to build your family closeness with these quick family activities:

1.  Read aloud.  Read a fun book to younger kids, or take turns reading aloud from a chapter book with older children.  Try reading aloud one paragraph at a time, switching to the next person each paragraph.  (As a variation, have each person read one page before passing on the book.)  Reading aloud as a family is a great way for kids to practice reading and get comfortable with not only reading to people, but public speaking as well.

2.  Play a board game or card game.  It doesn’t have to be a 4-hour game of Monopoly to be a smashing fun time!  Pick a game that can be played in 30 minutes or less that’s appropriate for all the ages in your family to play together.  Games that require partners or teams are an even better way to foster cooperation.

3.  Play frisbee.  Exercise, fresh air, and family fun… playing frisbee in your own yard can be a great frugal treat for parents and kids alike!

4.  Play Hide and Seek.  Hiding and seeking both take critical thinking and problem solving skills, making Hide and Seek a fun educational game for little ones.  Indoors or outdoors, this old standby of a game is sure to please.

5.  Test your knowledge with family flash cards or trivia cards.  There are many fun varieties of flash cards and trivia cards that you can purchase, such a BrainQuest.  It’s also fun to make your own flash cards as a family by allowing everyone to draw their own pictures and write out questions.  Little kids will need assistance, but you’ll end up with memorabilia that will be loved for years and is unique to your family.

6.  Play charades.  Imagination, pretending and investigation all come into play in this age-old game.  Choosing a theme, such as school or camping, to pick your charades words from will make it easier for young kids to guess them.

7.  Watch a TV show episode that’s a favorite in your family.  Pop some popcorn and huddle close together on the couch. 

8.  Have an impromptu “photo shoot”.  Have your kids “model” their dress-up clothes while you be the photographer and let them pose.

9.  Let the kids give you a makeover.  Whether it’s painting dad’s toenails to look like Easter eggs or giving mom a new hairstyle and makeup, this fun project is free and takes little time… and the kids will LOVE it!  Don’t forget to take a picture of the “makeover” for the scrapbook.

10.  Cook together.  From baking cookies to cooking dinner, there are many fun kitchen projects that will bring family members together.  Added bonus:  the kids will be learning the valuable life skill of cooking while being helpful and feeling important.

11.  Have a dance party.  Put on the radio or iPod and blast your favorite family-friendly tunes while everyone boogies down in the living room.  Dancing is not only great exercise and fun, but also releases endorphins (feel-good chemicals) in the body.  Endorphins released during a family dance party will permanently link feel-good emotions to family time in their minds.  Exercise, fun silly dancing, great music, and family bonding all in one.  What more could you ask for? 

Those 11 great activities should give you a quick reference list to use the next time you find an extra 30 minutes in your schedule.  Building closeness in your family, whether between parents and kids or between siblings, doesn’t have to be a big production.  Family-building activities can be free and quick, with little preparation and without even leaving home.  Try one out today!

What fun activities do you do as a family when you only have 30 minutes or less? 

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng.

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Thanks to Biblical Womanhood for hosting Frugal Friday.

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Hannah asks, “So why are you always happy?”

I tell her that I have a wonderful family and lots of love and a great life. I am grateful and happy for that always. Hannah continues to provide hypothetical instances of things that would make me not be happy: something bad happening, being sick, etc. At this point I realize that to Hannah, being happy is something she thinks comes from the outside.

Outside reasons are also called external motivators or external stimuli. For more on External vs. Internal Motivation, check out this article. Circumstances, such as an unpleasant conversation, or changing a dirty diaper, may not be positive. They may not lift you up or make you feel good. These external stimuli are everywhere in our lives and cannot be avoided. Many people live their entire lives thinking that “happiness” comes from external stimuli: from people saying nice things to them, from people loving them, from getting offered a great job. In other words, they think that their happiness comes from some place outside of themselves, and that thinking puts their emotional well-being and mental state in the hands of environmental circumstances (other people, places, the weather). The downfall of this kind of thinking is that you cannot control external stimuli, and if rainy weather makes you unhappy, you have no control over your unhappiness if you live in Seattle!

So how do we teach our children to be internally motivated? Hannah already got a little taste of the difference just from my explanation. I could see the gears in her mind turning as she processed this new viewpoint. Being grateful is my source of true happiness, and no one and nothing can ever take that away. A paradigm shift is hard to explain to an 8-year-old, but even louder than an explanation is an example. Show your children that when the unexpected happens, your happiness and love is still intact. That even though “bad luck” may have befallen your family (a lost job, a dying pet), true happiness is something you always have because it’s inside you.

Explain to your kids every time an opportunity arises, show them by your example. By teaching our children to find their true happiness inside, we are helping them grow into capable, powerful adults who can master their emotions, who are resilient and can handle life’s ups and downs!

Homemaker Barbi Says: Find your happiness today and share it with your children!

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I marveled that 2 ordinary people could provide a child with such an enriched education in not only academics, but life, with absolutely no help! No tutors, no internet, no public school. I felt envious all at once of this fictional family; I wished that my husband and I could provide the same kind of upbringing for our children.

My husband does not know boxing, which is why we pay a Tae Kwon Do school to teach Hannah self defense. We don’t home school Hannah, which is why she goes to public school for 6 hours a day. I don’t know how to ballroom dance, which is why the kids won’t know how to do it unless we sign them up for dance classes.

I always wanted to learn piano as a child, but the lessons were too expensive. My family barely had enough for groceries. Frills (such as learning anything that wasn’t taught at public school) just weren’t in the budget. My husband has been teaching himself to play piano from books off and on over the years. He can play bits and pieces of songs, but rarely has the time to study or practice. I’d love to teach our kids piano, and think music is something that can enrich everyone’s life. Sadly, they won’t be learning it from us. If we want them to learn piano, we’ll be paying someone else to teach them and losing 2 hours a week of time with our children while they are at lessons.

Why don’t we know the things that our children should be learning from us? Why didn’t our parents teach us these things they surely learned from their parents? At what point did it become acceptable to stop training your children in the necessary skills for life, such as cooking, sewing, mechanics and repair, manners, languages, self defense? What about the arts which make us well-rounded as people: music, drawing, painting? What about caring for children? Is it acceptable that new parents have to learn to care for their babies from reading books and taking parenting classes? Why weren’t they taught how to care for their families by their parents? Isn’t THAT the most important thing we parents can give to our children – knowledge of how to care for your loved ones? I hope desperately that if our children learn nothing else from us, they will learn to raise their children properly and care for their families.

Is it the skills that are really that important? If so, I could just sign them up for every class imaginable. Or is it more important that they learn these things from us, their parents? Is it more meaningful to be taught by the people who brought you into the world and are responsible for growing you into an adult?

I think that’s what having children is really about. We’re creating our legacy to leave behind. These children will one day be all that is left of us. I want them to take some of us with them and incorporate our influences into who they become, not some of the 2nd grade teacher and the piano teacher and the gym teacher!

In the meantime, I’ve realized that the things I lament not being able to pass on to my kids are things I lament not knowing myself. The only way to fix that is to learn them! I will be scrutinizing how I use my time in a completely different way now. What is more important, getting the garage cleaned out, or spending time to educate myself better so that I can train my children?

My job is to be a parent and I want to be the best at my job. That means it’s time for me to examine what kind of parent I truly wish to be, and spend the time to become just that.

Homemaker Barbi Says: We need to teach ourselves so that we can teach our kids!

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