Articles of Faith incentive

This summer we encouraged our children (mostly Maren and Joshua, but Christopher wanted his name up there too) to memorize the articles of faith. I found some ice cream pictures on the internet and cut them out. Each time they memorize one, they get an ice cream scoop, and when they're finished, they get to go out with mommy or daddy to get any kind of ice cream or sundae they want.

Building a Happy Home

Well we finished our warm fuzzy jar, went to Gatti-Town and had a great time. Then we needed another incentive to treat each other kindly. So, we our now building a happy home. I built a simple house out of legos, took off 60 pieces and put them in a container. Now whenever the kids do something that helps build someone up, they put on a brick. If they do something that tears someone down, they take off a brick. Hopefully it won't take us as long to build our happy home as it did to fill our warm fuzzy jar.

"I'm the thief!" (aka Kids' Book Club part 2)

Joshua chose a Cam Jansen book for his turn at our summer kids' book club. Specifically, he chose "Cam Jansen: the mystery of the stolen corn popper" in which the kids' are shopping for back to school supplies and someone keeps stealing shopping bags. For his meeting, we did some fun mystery type games. We started by splitting into two groups and doing a mystery vocabulary contest. I put words such as "alibi" and "victim" up on the board, read a definition aloud, and teams took turns coming up with which word fit the definition. If they missed it, the other team had a chance to get it.

Next we played a memory game. We practiced using our photographic memories like Cam. I put out a tray with several items, they studied it, said "click" and then closed their eyes while I removed a few objects. Then they would open their eyes and write down (or draw a picture) of what they thought was missing. We did this several times and I added more objects each time to make it harder.

While we were finishing that game, Joshua went upstairs and dressed in a funny costume.

I had set out a green binky's shopping bag (like in the book) on the counter. He ran into the kitchen, yelled "I'm the thief!", grabbed the bag, and ran back upstairs and hid it in Maren's room. I then told the kids they were all witnesses to a crime and asked if they could remember what the thief was wearing, what he said, what he did, etc. . .

Under the green shopping bag I had put a clue, which asked a question about the book. When they answered the question, I opened the clue and it told us a "department" of the store to search next, like the shoe department, school supplies department, baby department, etc . . . The clues led us to my daughter's room where the shopping bag was hidden.

In the bag were treat bags filled with "Binky's surprise bags" (from the book) filled with green candies. I also served green food, like grapes, celery, kiwi, and honeydew. It was a fun book club.