Thursday, January 7, 2010

Clubbing

Keepers of My Insanity the Faith Club
The Positives and Negatives



Conversations with the children that turn the club into a negative:
--"I know how to ride my bicycle. Can I have the Bicycle Badge?" (For any who are completely unfamiliar with Keepers of the Faith Club, much more is required to earn a badge. Like usually some reading and, you know, learning something. The Bike Badge, for example, requires that the participant learn the names of the parts of the bike, be able to properly clean the bike, have the ability to repair the inner tube of the bike tire, and complete a 5-mile bike ride.)

--"Daddy, will you just play one more game of Chess with me tonight? I have to play 10 games. TODAY. I MUST DO IT TODAY!"

--"Will you please get me all the materials I need to knit a sweater today? Oh, and maybe later Dad could build me a dollhouse, so I can begin working to earn my Miniatures Badge."

--"Today I'm going to make drop cookies, molded cookies, rolled cookies, bar cookies, and filled cookies. Do you have any ice cream for my filled cookie?"

Although I will have to dig through all the literature, I'm pretty sure the children are permitted to earn a badge about character traits. I think perhaps patience will be the first we work on.


Positives:
--Alex did the dishes yesterday.
--Jacob read a whole book about chess yesterday.
--The kids are taking the initiative to take on projects listed in the book.
--The kids are excited about something that involves...shhhh...learning stuff.
--Both Mark and I are spending special time with the kids working on these projects.
--The kids are helping each other. Alex played Chess with Jacob today. She also helped Audrey with her Puzzle Badge.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ummm...I have some of the 'character trait' booklets--if you would like to have them. I do not have 'Patience.' Apparently, that one was started and probably burned after failed attempts at learning patience. :oP

I do have "Kindness," "Diligence," "Compassion," and "Obedience." Think you could use any of those??

tsinclair said...

Sounds like a good start. Kudos to you for taking it on. I feel the winter blah starting to kick in over here. Must...fight...it...Spring...will....come :-)

Kathleen said...

tennisisformoms ~ Well, your comment sparked something in the back of my mind (occasionally, there really are some sparks in there!!). I actually have several of the Keepers character books (I knew they sounded familiar to me)…even Patience. I tried to use some of them last year. If I remember right, they were kinda dry, plus it’s the KJV used throughout so, for the sake of my kids, I had to keep cross-referencing in my NIV (I do so wish Christian society hadn’t stopped children from learning from the King James Version; it’s such pretty language!). I may try to tweak them a bit to work for us. I suppose I should get to that tweaking on the patience book! Thanks for offering the books, though!

CrossView said...

I know I'm a dork but even the negatives sound good to me. They're excited to earn the badges and can learn that whole "plan in advance" thing (which I'm so NOT good at) and does the 5-mile ride have to be all at once? 'cause that sounds like it would kill me out here with no pavement and how old does KotF go through? and now I just want to see how long this run-on sentence will be... =P

@nnie said...

Your post title made it sound like you and Travel Daddy were out on the town! But eh... shoulda known it would have something to do with your kiddos... you are SUCH a good homeschoolin' mama. The Club sounds like something we could use over here in OK. I'm feeling the winter frustration come over everyone... we could definitely use some focus.

dclouser said...

Sounds like fun and a lot of work for you and Mark, too! You will actually have to learn to do all those things in order to help your kids learn them - yikes. Sounds like a great life skills curriculum - I'm anxious to see the kids and have them tell me all about it!

Kathleen said...

Crossview ~ An intentional well-crafted sentence is certainly acceptable every now and then! To answer your question, KOF clubs say they are for up to age 16.

Annie ~ Out on the town...I wish! And my NOT being out on the town has nothing to do with my being a good homeschooling mom, but rather, the lack of possible babysitters in the area! :)

Debbi ~ You're right, many of these skills we will have to learn. What's the old saying about old dogs? Do you think there's hope for us?! :)