Nature Treasure Hunts with Kids

There are lots of ways to make hiking more enticing to kids. I have one friend who ran ahead and hid little toys along the trail for her young daughter to find as she walked. There's always the alphabet game or rainbow game: find something that starts with every letter, or in every color, in order, as you walk along the trail. 

We have a really great program in our area (central Vermont and New Hampshire) called Valley Quests that has largely done this job for us. Valley Quests are simply walks or hikes in the area made into treasure hunts. There is a quest box at the end-- the top of the mountain or whatever the destination is-- containing a log book to sign your name and write a message if you desire, a tidbit of information about the site, and a handmade stamp with an ink pad so you can make a stamp and remember you were there.  (You could stamp on anything; we own one of the Quest books so we've taken to collecting all our stamps in the back of that.) Along the way there are clues to mark your journey: a huge burl on the side of a tree, an old stone wall, a distant view of a particular mountain from a certain spot.

I have absolutely loved them. There isn't any actual treasure to collect, besides the stamp and the satisfaction of finding the box, which is sometimes pretty tricky! But just having the clues to read and the thrill of being the first to spot this or that landmark is motivating and fun. 

Countless times when I have had time to "kill" with one kid while waiting to pick the other up from an activity, I've gone to the Valley Quest site, where you can search by town, and checked out what quests might be in the vicinity. I am continually impressed that we find special little spots we never knew about this way, even though my husband and I have lived in this area for twenty years.

Where's M?

I feel it is important to note that in general I do not love scavenger-hunt-type things; give a group of kids (or their chaperones!) a scavenger hunt to do on a museum field trip, for example, and you can guarantee they will race through the museum frantically checking things off while being blind to anything and everything not on The List. Scavenger hunts can falsely prescribe what's important and turn off any natural learning or interest. Stepping off my soap box now... Somehow Valley Quests feel different; they introduce us to new natural places, and they make us actually slow down on a walk and really look at all the details around us. Since these quests take place in nature, quite often things have changed a bit since the quest author wrote the clue and now the young sapling is a full-grown tree or the rotting log is fully covered in moss. A "birch with bark so white" took us a long time because it had lost all its bark since the clue had been written. But it's neat to look and look and look and only adds to the excitement when we figure those things out too. 

Finally found it!

Collecting the stamp

Found it!

They aren't all big hikes either-- lots of them are quite short indeed. We've even done a Civil-War-themed cemetery quest, as well as a quest to the tiniest park that we never would have noticed otherwise in downtown Lebanon, NH.

Civil-War-themed cemetery quest

Quest to a tiny downtown park

Our love of Quests inspired my kids and I to make one of our own this year. It was a process, but pretty straight-forward, because the Valley Quest site lays out the steps and materials needed very clearly. We had several fun outings, choosing to do our research on especially nice days, as we tried to settle on a location for our Quest. There was some debate about where it should be-- we didn't want it to be too intense or long of a hike so as not to scare some people away from doing it. We wanted it to be relatively convenient for us to check in on from time to time. We wanted it to be a special spot, with a defined destination, not just a random walk. We wanted it to be in the woods, not in a busy or residential area where it would get accidentally spotted or messed with. Eventually we came to agreement. 

And then we walked it some more. We all brought along clipboards or notebooks and jotted down ideas for fun landmarks and clues. Back at home, we synthesized them into an order. In a few separate sittings, we word-smithed a bit, deciding not to stress ourselves out with rhyming (many Quests we'd done, but not all, seemed to rhyme). We also decided to draw a rough, not-to-scale map to go with it-- my son took this on. We decided to make it a riddle Quest, with blanks to fill in as you go and then some letters to unscramble at the end because my daughter had really enjoyed a Quest of that type we'd done before. Finally, we did a little basic research about the Appalachian Trail and wrote up a paragraph about it to include in our box, because our Quest happens to be located along it. 

Hard at work

Finally, we were down to a really fun art project: carving a rubber stamp. Each Quest has its own unique stamp. We had some different ideas about what our stamp should be. In the end, we had such fun carving the stamps and liked them all so much that we decided to put all three in our finished box and let Questers themselves decide which they wanted to use.       

We submitted our Quest to Vital Communities, the organization that manages them, and they accepted it and posted it to their site. Find it here! 

In our finished plastic Quest box we placed: a small notebook to be a log book, a pencil, a manual pencil sharpener, our stamps, an ink pad, and our card of information about the area. 

It was fun to work on a joint project together, and doing so was a reminder that, with my kids almost five years apart and with different temperaments, it can be pretty challenging to work on a joint project together and meet everybody's needs and wishes! But we did it. Like any big, long-term project, there's a sense of satisfaction when all the pieces come together in the end. (And when we visited our box in the woods recently, after first placing it there about a month ago, it was a reward to find that three people had already visited and signed the log book.) 

We're pretty proud of our Quest and if you ever find yourself in the "Upper Valley" (the Connecticut River Valley area of central Vermont and New Hampshire) with a little extra time on your hands, you might want to check it out. Find our own full Quest here!  

Do you have any programs like Valley Quest in your area, or do you do anything like this to make walks more enticing for your kids?  

Curriculum Review: Core Knowledge History Units

On a recent chilly fall morning, my son and daughter and I had an "Olympic Games Day" out in our backyard. My son had brainstormed some games and equipment we could use to imitate the ancient, original Olympic games in Olympia he had read about in social studies: 

Javelin-- carved wooden spear

Discus-- bocce ball

Long jump-- see how far past a line they could each take a running leap

Races-- timed around the perimeter of our yard 

Wrestling-- because they really wanted to, although we added a few more rules beyond the two authentic ones we'd read about in Ancient Greece (which were simply: no biting and no sticking your fingers in your opponent's eyes!)

Olympic Games Day "Javelin"

We made some accommodations to each game to make it a little more fair for my 7-year-old going up against her 12-year-old brother. We even came up with a basic point system, doing a few trials of some of the activities and then tallying the points and announcing gold, silver, and bronze (for the activities I was willing to be a third participant in). Winners received gold-, silver-, or blue-wrapped chocolate coins we happened to have leftover in our candy stash. 

Needless to say, the kids loved it. But I don't get to take credit for the fun idea, as it was included as a suggested activity in my Core Knowledge Teacher Guide for the Ancient Greece and Rome unit my son is doing in history currently. 

We've been using Core Knowledge history units for several years now in our homeschool, and one of my favorite things about them is the enriching additional activities suggested along with every chapter or two, like our Olympic Games Day last week. There are a lot of things I like about this resource for teaching and learning history, though. Here's my review of the curricula. 

The Approach

The Core Knowledge Foundation, according to their web site, wants the emphasis of K-8 education to be "an enabling core of broadly shared knowledge...Such knowledge is possessed by successful adults and taken for granted by literate writers and speakers. It's the broad and diverse knowledge that makes responsible citizenship possible." It's a lofty statement, but the idea is that there are things we all need to know. The Core Knowledge Sequence, in fact, lays out ALL of those things they think kids should know from preschool through grade 8 in language arts, history, geography, mathematics, science, visual arts and music. It's an intense, and, honestly, overwhelming document. I wouldn't want to teach every subject using Core Knowledge resources because I think the kids would tire of everything being taught in the same basic structure all day; also, I have other programs and resources I love in other subject areas. But for history studies, it is our foundation and we've found it indispensable. 

Getting Started

When I am planning our year, I go to the Core Knowledge web site, click on Curriculum, and then Download Curriculum. You can filter by academic subject and/or grade level on the side. The page will show you all the units available that fit your search terms. I like to just select "History & Geography" and not specify a grade level so that I see all the social studies units. As the grade levels go up, the reading level of the student readers is higher, and some of the content is more complex, but a grade level or so up or down from where you child is doesn't matter at all. I select units based on what we want to study rather than on grade level, and more and more over the years I have my son (now a 7th grader) choose. I do NOT try to teach all of the units listed within a certain grade level. There is a breakneck pace mandated in the teacher guide if one were to do so to fit it all in; we like to take our time and work through the units deeply rather than trying to get through a certain number of them. 

Unit Components

The units consist of a Student Reader, a Teacher Guide, Timeline Cards, and Online Resources. A little more about each of these components is below. 

Student Reader: The Student Reader is a textbook for the unit. Some of the smaller units have just a few chapters, while the heftier ones can have around 20. Each chapter is just a few pages long and has a "Big Question" at the beginning to help students focus on the big ideas of the chapter. For a chapter called "The Golden Age of Athens" in our Ancient Greece and Rome unit, the big question was: "What were some of the cultural achievements during the Golden Age of Athens?" In the past, my son and I would discuss the Big Question after reading and discussing a chapter. This year, now that he's older, I've been having him write each Big Question and his paragraph response in a certain section of his social studies notebook. (It is a suggestion in the Teacher Guide to have students do so.) This way he has all the "answers" to the big concepts of the unit in one place to refer to or use for studying. My son is a detail guy so he tends to go off on a tangent with a lot of details about one particular part of a chapter he found interesting, so it has been challenging, but good for him, to learn that he has to first make sure he answers (and can sift out) the big ideas of the chapter. The Student Reader also has some photos, maps, and drawings that illustrate the chapter contents. Each chapter contains several key vocabulary words defined in sidebar boxes, to aid comprehension of the chapter and help boost students' vocabularies as a whole. The Student Reader is available as an actual book for purchase, or as a FREE downloaded PDF from the Core Knowledge web site. (See more about these options below under Cost.) 

Student Reader

Teacher Guide

The Teacher Guide is also available for purchase as a text or for free as a PDF download. The Teacher Guide includes the pacing guide, which I largely ignore. (We go at our own pace which is generally a bit than the 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week pace that is outlined.) It includes some general teaching suggestions and information about the unit components, and some worksheets that can be photocopied out of the back for student use (including crossword puzzles, fill-in-the-blanks, graphic organizers, and multiple-choice quizzes). There are also performance assessments at the end of each unit, suggesting larger and interdisciplinary projects to end each unit with a bang, whether by writing a story or essay, making a travel brochure, writing a poem, or making a piece of artwork. 

But the bulk of the Teacher Guide is chapter-by-chapter guidance. Every chapter, right through middle school-level units, includes pages of Guided Reading Supports for the chapter-- page-by-page commentary and questions to ask students to confirm their understanding (there are "Literal," "Evaluative," and "Inferential" questions). When my son was in 4th grade, we would read the chapters together, and I would refer to my Teacher Guide and ask all of these questions as we went. But my son is a good reader and this process made him a little antsy to just get on with it. So then we evolved to having him read an entire chapter (or two) and then I'd sit with him and go back and ask him a selection of these questions to check for understanding. Now that he's a 7th grader, we are skipping the guided reading supports; I am having him read a chapter, write his response to the Big Question on the chapter's big ideas, then I discuss with him his response to the Big Question with evidence from the text as needed. (A sample response to each Big Question is also included in the Teacher Guide.)  

Teacher Guide

Timeline Cards

Just as the Teacher Guide and Student Reader are, the Timeline Cards are available as a free download to be printed out, or for purchase in a cardstock bundle. Most chapters have at least one timeline card. Our current Ancient Greece and Rome unit has 24 Timeline Cards total, over 17 chapters. As you progress through the chapters, you hang up these Timeline Cards in order. Each card is 8.5 x 11 and shows an image and caption representative of the chapter, along with the date. The cumulative effect of hanging them all over the course of a unit helps students keep an eye on all they've read so far and internalize each event in history along with a sense of when it happened in relation to other events around that time or concept. The Teacher Guide suggests different ways of displaying the timeline, including vertically, horizontally, and pinned to a clothesline strung across the room. We have our current timeline making its way across the top of the wall around our great room and it works.   

Timeline Cards

Cost 

All these resources are available for FREE download at the Core Knowledge web site. For our first three years of utilizing Core Knowledge units, we did exactly that, my son reading the chapters on an iPad, me looking through the Teacher Guide notes on my laptop, printing out the Timeline Cards to hang on our walls-- and it worked. It's so great these resources are all free. However, this year for the first time we decided to spend the relatively small amounts to order the real life Teacher Guides, Student Readers, and even Timeline Cards. (This is largely because of a larger goal to help my son improve his study skills like reading for key ideas, underlining or highlighting as he goes, and notetaking. I thought those things might be easier to work on in concrete form, at least for now.) The books are attractive, the Student Reader the length and width of a paperback novel, the Teacher Guide spiral bound for easy use.   

Cross-Curricular Connections 

These units are a great foundation for any given event or period of time we've studied in history. They provide the backbone but they are not all we do. I think the most impactful unit we have done so far was the one on the American Revolution when my son was in 4th grade. We worked through the big Core Knowledge unit. But meanwhile, when he had reading time during the school day I had him choose from among some books in a couple of baskets of nonfiction on the topic of the American Revolution. (We discovered some real favorites in those days, and my son continues to tell anecdotes he learned via now-beloved nonfiction author, Steve Sheinkin, from his hilarious King George: What Was His Problem?) During writing time, he wrote a couple of informational pieces on subtopics of the American Revolution, synthesizing facts and stories from across multiple sources. History became a love of his that year, and the topics and themes of the American Revolution in particular, in part because we immersed ourselves in it.  

Online Resources

Each unit includes a link on the Core Knowledge web site for online resources, which anyone has access to, whether you purchased the books or just downloaded the free versions. The Teacher Guide at the end of each chapter will recommend activities that utilize one or several of these online resources. These "extra" activities can take a whole session or more, but they are generally well worth it. 

Here's a selection of fun and enriching things we've done by way of the online resources and Teacher Guide suggestions of these units over the years:

• Played Native American games (Native Americans, Kindergarten)  
• Watched the animated movie The Prince of Egypt, which tells the story of Moses and the Exodus (Three World Religions, Grade 1) 
• Went on a virtual field trip to Versailles (French Revolution and Romanticism, Grade 6)
• Created our own illuminated manuscripts (Medieval Europe, Grade 4)
• Watched a video of Kabuki Theater, and wrote haiku (Feudal Japan, Grade 5)
• Analyzed and compared two African American spirituals (Civil War, Grade 5)
• Played a Maya math game (Maya, Aztec, and Inca Civilizzations, Grade 5)
• Made a papier-mache pinata (The Culture of Mexico, Grade 1)
• Met and fell in love with the musical Hamilton through a video of "My Shot" (The United States Constitution, Grade 4)

W's own illuminated manuscript next to some actual ones (Medieval Europe, Grade 4)

Pinata painting (Mexico Culture, Grade 1)

If used in one way, the Core Knowledge history units could be viewed as just another boring textbook. But I think it's best used as strong foundation for interdisciplinary study (doing some related reading, writing, art, etc.), and is greatly enriched by the engaging performance assessments at the end of each unit and by the online resources referenced in the units and linked online. 

I recommend these history units for homeschool or school use! Please let me know if you've tried them, or if you have any questions about implementing them. <3 

Positive, Productive Problem-Solving with Kids

It's easy as a parent to get in a habit of constantly reminding your child about the same behavior repeatedly. Maybe it's leaving their wet towel on the floor, maybe it's never being ready on time when it is time to leave the house, maybe it's always interrupting others, or maybe something else. We find ourselves reacting in the moment to the same, pretty predictable, problem(s) day in and day out. But this pattern doesn't solve the problem: you feel like a broken record, your kid feels nagged, and you both feel frustrated. 

But, when you step back and see the situation for what it is-- a regular problem area, a pattern-- that is a step toward ending the problem. There are ways to change and improve those habitual frustrations, and better yet, leave parent and child feeling good instead of bad. 

One strategy is the one-on-one parent-child conference, or social conference, best used when working with an individual child about a recurring problem. The other method is a family meeting, for problem-solving as a group a situation or part of the day that generally is not working well and involves more than one person. Both are useful, depending on the circumstances. 

Sometimes these methods blend together. The basic approach for both is similar. Both are conversations with kids. Both involve naming the problem, brainstorming solutions, and choosing strategies to improve. Instead of the adult making all the decisions and handing down consequences or changes to the way things are going to be done, both of these strategies have kids and adults working together to problem solve. Being involved in problem solving makes children feel respected and more on board with outcomes, and also gives them practice in an important life skill.

I first learned about these strategies years ago as a teacher when I read a great book called Teaching Children to Care, and from my Responsive Classroom training in general. There are lots of resources to be found about class meetings (which are applicable to families as well as classrooms) and problem-solving conferences, and I listed a few handy ones at the end of this post. I've internalized my own version of each of them over the years which I am sharing here.

 

Here's the format of each method and examples of when to use them.

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One-on-One Adult-Child Problem-Solving Conversation

Examples of Times to Use It:

Your child is never ready to go out the door on time.

Your child always leaves their wet towel on the floor.

Your child habitually uses the bathroom for a long time during dinner time.

Your child leaves belongings strewn all over the house. 

Your child interrupts a lot.

Your child bites their nails.

Your child says hi barely audibly when they see people they know in public.

Your child regularly forgets their household chore(s)

Format of One-on-One Problem-Solving Conversation:

Link to a Google Doc outline of steps below here. 

1. Say what you (the adult) have noticed happening. As much as possible, describe the situation in a non-judgmental tone, just the facts. (For example, I've noticed a few times lately that when we see people we know and they say hi to you you answer so quietly that it's hard for them to hear or understand you.)

2. Ask if the child has noticed this, too. Usually, they have. 

3. Ask if the child has any ideas why this is happening. This is a time when shockingly simple solutions sometimes become apparent and the issue turns out to be an easy thing to fix. (For example, if the problem is that they never put their games away neatly, you may discover at this point that the reason is because they can't easily open and close the bags and boxes they go in-- in which case a very simple solution is to choose a new storage system together that is easier for them to use.) 

4. Tell the child why the behavior is a problem, who it affects, or the rule(s) it breaks. (For example: wet towels that get left around can stain things, they stink, and it causes us to have to do laundry more often.)  

5. Ask for any ideas they have to solve the problem. Kids often have ideas when you take the time to ask. If further probing is needed, ask what you can do to help with this problem. Ask what the child will do herself to help solve this problem. 

Try to just keep quiet and let them get any ideas they may have out first. The adult can then offer ideas or suggestions too. Make sure you don't present yours as more important. But include any ideas you have that might help. It should be a shared brainstorming session. 

It can be helpful to write down aspects of these conversations as you go, but especially to do so at this point, so you can both see and look over the ideas that have been mentioned. Every idea floated, unless absolutely unsafe or impossible, should be accepted and listed at this stage. Censor as little as possible and get as many ideas down as possible. 

6. Weigh the pros and cons of the ideas listed and agree on one (or a combination) to try. Look at all the possible solutions and discuss them or rule out as needed. Choose one to agree to try. Talk briefly about how you'll both know the plan is working and make a rough plan for when you'll check in about how it's going. 

7. Follow up: after a week, or a reasonable amount of time to have tried the solution, has passed ask the child how they think it is going. If it is going well and the problem is better, great! If it hasn't helped or hasn't helped enough, look back at the brainstormed ideas and choose something else to try also or instead. Repeat as needed with a problem-solving, we-can-figure-this-out-together mentality.  

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Family Problem-Solving Meeting

Examples of Times to Use it:

When you're tired of ongoing problems such as:

House is messy

No one comes to dinner when called

Morning routine feels hectic

Fighting in the car

Rushing/fighting to get to a certain seat at the table or in the car

Playing too roughly in the house

Or proactively/preventatively when looking ahead at potential challenging situations:

How to make an upcoming week at grandma's go well?

How to make a friend who is coming over feel welcome?

What should we do when out to dinner at that fancy restaurant Friday night so everyone will have a good time?

Format of Family Problem-Solving Meetings
Problem-solving group meetings are essentially the same process as above, except it's not focused on one individual's problematic behavior, but rather on a recurring situation or time of day that is not going well in the family (or classroom) at large. It involves interactions among people; there are more moving arts. Everybody needs a chance to air their grievances as well as to share their ideas and solutions. As noted in the examples above, group meetings can also be super useful when we hold them proactively before a situation that is likely to be tough. (In my former first-grade classroom, I often held a class meeting a day or two before a substitute was to teach in my place, and I think it cut down-- at least a bit!-- on problematic substitute-teacher behavior and helped them all have a more productive day than they might otherwise have had.) 

Some basic rules for these meetings are important to establish and review each time: Don't interrupt each other. Use an "I" voice; say how things make you feel, not what you assume about others-- which is another way of saying don't place blame. 

In our home we recently had a meeting about our family dinner times, and particularly some recurring tension that cropped up at the end of them. See our situation and examples from our meeting below. 

Link to a Google Doc Outline of steps below here. 

1. State the problem(s). The adult says what they notice and why it's a problem.  

Everybody eats at different speeds. W eats fast and then is fidgety and wants to get up the moment he's swallowed his last bite. M eats more slowly and seems to get distracted by different things (including being distracted by the fidgetiness and things W does when he's bored and done eating) and we are all usually waiting for her to finish. Dad and I are trying to teach table manners and we sort of feel that we all should stay at the table till everyone's done. We feel nagged by W asking over and over if he can clear his plate. We  want M to have the time she needs but we also get a little bored when we are waiting for her to finish for a long time. Sometimes it even seems like M is going slowly at the end just to annoy W. We feel bad about the whole situation because dinner should be a pleasant time and it isn't at the end. 

2. Gather information from the group. Ask what everyone else notices and what's hard for them. 

M does not like when W tells her to hurry up-- it's annoying! If it's food she doesn't like as much, she eats slower. Sometimes she wants seconds but we sometimes say no if we've been already waiting. 

W feels bored out of his mind. He wants to get up so he can go read and do other things with his evening and not run out of time for those things because he has to sit at the table forever.  

3. Brainstorm solutions. Have the whole group brainstorm ideas of how to make the situation better. Make sure everyone gets their turn to talk and say everything they want to say. (Boy oh boy, did my kids have strong feelings and therefore a hard time waiting their turn to say their piece during our meeting). Accept and write down any ideas unless unsafe or impossible.  

If we have things M thinks are yummy for dinner she would eat quicker. 

Have a set time W can always get up by even if others aren't finished. 

Have a set total length of time for dinner and when that time is up dinner is over, done or not.

Give a 5 minute warning at the end of dinner. 

4. Choose a solution to try.  Talk together about which ideas seem the best or most likely to work and agree on one, or a combination of a couple, to try. Make sure everyone can agree to try it. Make sure it's realistic/feasible. Make sure it respects everyone involved.

We decided to try a combination of things, including giving a warning when dinner is over and Mom getting at least one dinner idea from M each week for something she thinks is yummy and wants to eat. But the main thing we chose is a length of time for dinner. We wanted it to be a generous amount if time to be realistic for M and not cause her to feel pressured to eat fast, but also something a bit more efficient for her to learn to work with that felt workable for the rest of us. We chose 40 minutes with a plan to set our time timer (by the way: these are incredibly handy tools) for that length of time so everyone could be aware of how much time is left.   

5. Make a plan for how you know whether the strategy is working or not and when you will check in again. 

We decided to see how it was going in a week. 

6. Check back in and adjust the plan as needed. When you check in some days later, decide if everyone thinks the problem area is getting better. If so, great! Keep going. If not, go back to the drawing board and choose another or an alternate solution to try. Repeat as needed.  

The general consensus was that everyone was liking the new plan. There was little or no pestering from W, which M and the parents both appreciated. W was usually getting the time he wanted in the evening after dinner. M usually had enough time to finish what she wanted and when she didn't it was only a couple bites she had to toss or save as leftovers for another time. We all knew an end time for dinner was in sight and didn't feel like we had to wait as long. W was more often able to have conversations when he was done rather than fidget and be preoccupied with when others would be done. We've mostly loved this plan ever since. But it hasn't been all perfect. Sometimes we forget to set the timer. Sometimes W gets in the habit of pointing out or telling M how much time is left which she doesn't like and we remind him is not his job. Sometimes sports mean is is already a late night when we sit down and we don't feel like having a 40 minute dinner (and maybe M has become a little more focused in her eating too) so we set the timer for less. Overall it helped!

A few final notes:

These strategies-- group meetings and one-on-one problem-solving conferences-- have been invaluable in my professional and personal life. As a classroom teacher I often relied on these problem-solving strategies and found them to be so much more productive, and feel so much more respectful, than other methods of dealing with inevitable classroom behavior problems. Kids are excited to have their problems paid attention to and to be given the chance to give their input. They'd storm in from recess, saying "I have something we NEED to talk about at the next class meeting." I never had a shortage of agenda ideas jotted down when our weekly class meeting day rolled around, which students looked forward to. We all need opportunities to have our grievances heard. 

When I take the time to have a one on one conference-like chat with one of my kids at home, or call a meeting when something has come to a head, everybody seems to leave the conversation feeling more positive. I've seen problem areas improve, if not go away altogether-- sometimes with comically simple solutions, and sometimes after several iterations of trying a solution and failing and trying something else. 

In some cases there are other, bigger underlying factors at play, whether ADHD or extreme introversion or medical issues or anxiety. So of course some problems with kids and families can not be solved by a simple, thoughtful conversation. But many can. And it won't hurt to try. 

These problem-solving strategies are closely tied in with the language we use with kids: our words and tone-- and listening fully-- matter. 

Also, when we choose to tackle a problem matters. In the moment is often not a productive time to try. The right moment is often later, separate from the heat of the moment, when we can sit down and give everyone a chance to say their feelings and work it out together. It's about being proactive rather than reactive. The goal is to walk away on the same page with a plan, so that it might actually go better the next time.

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Other Resources about Family Meetings (Class Meetings) and One-on-One Problem Solving Conferences:

Article on Teacher-Child Problem-Solving Conferences (equally applicable to parent-child situations)

Sample Problem-Solving Conference Format/Planning Guide

Sample Class Meeting (i.e. Family Meeting) Format/Planning Guide

The Joy of Painting Step by Step

 

We love online step by step painting tutorials as homeschool art projects (I may have mentioned this in 2020 and 2021). 

First of all, everyone's painting of the same subject comes out completely differently. Each artist's style is all over each work of art. Just check out some of the many differences above.

Second, we learn a lot by doing step by step painting projects. While the end goal is to create a particular picture, the kids and I always learn painting techniques along the way that carry over into other projects. To name a few things we've learned: 

• to make leaves, reflections, snow on the top of a mountain, a background sky that fades from bright blue to lighter blue
• how to mix paints (or, rather, how to not mix them too much)
• to paint the canvas or spray it with water first to help the paints blend more smoothly
• to intentionally use the same brush without cleaning it sometimes
• how to make some trees and mountains look farther away or closer up
• all sorts of brush techniques, including holding your white-dipped brush above your painting and tapping it to make it look like it's snowing, and, using a bundle of Q-tips to make flower blossoms  

Each of these techniques we absorb makes us feel a little more adept at the skills of painting, and a little more likely to dream up our own picture and tackle a canvas on our own.

Third, of course, you get beautiful art to hang on the wall. We are always rotating the art work on display in our house, but a pretty canvas is one of the nicer, more polished pieces to decorate with.

Perhaps most importantly, doing a step by step painting project is a great opportunity to practice just trying our best and being patient with ourselves.   

Trying out Bob Ross's Joy of Painting Tutorials

This winter I had a paint and sip night at home with a friend. Since Bob Ross's classic The Joy of Painting show is available to stream on Amazon, we chose one of his paintings to do: "Mountain Lake." I always keep 11 x 14" canvases on hand for art projects, so we used those. Bob Ross uses oil paints. You can buy trademark Bob Ross oil paint sets (and brushes and tools...) online but they are pretty pricey. I don't use oil paints with the kids, and wasn't sure I wanted to use them myself either, so for this project we stuck with a nice set of heavy body acrylic paints we had. While they didn't include all the same colors or color names as Bob Ross's paints, some of them were the same and we could find something close enough for each step of the project. Two tools Bob Ross often uses are a fan brush, and a palette knife. I'd love to get those in the future to try them out, but we just used the variety of brushes in all sizes and shapes that I keep in a jar with our art supplies, and we made do just fine. While the episode was less than a half hour long, we ended up pausing the video a bunch of times to paint and then we'd watch a bit more, pause, paint, and so on. We were at it over two hours altogether but it was such a fun night. 

There's something about taking the time to do something just for the sake of being creative; as an adult I don't do that nearly enough and it's so fulfilling. One downside worth noting: I'd pictured an evening of sipping wine and chatting with my friend while painting, but we didn't do much talking (or wine drinking) because the painting itself took a lot of focus and effort! Our paintings are below; one came out looking like fall, while the other looks more like spring, and one of us oriented it horizontally and the other vertically. We both have a beautiful picture to hang in our houses now; the compliments from my family afterward were very ego-boosting to hear.

In the past, I'd watched a few Joy of Painting episodes with my kids, and they loved seeing the beautiful picture magically appear on the canvas and found it mesmerizing to watch and listen to, as I think many people do. My son went around afterward sharing some awesome Bob Ross quotes, his favorite being his unique encouragement about painting trees, which was something like: "sometimes these son of a guns don't want to come outta your brush, but you just gotta make 'em." You can't help but be charmed by his reverence for "almighty mountains," and of course his happy accidents, free clouds, and happy trees-- not to mention his hairdo. I can see watching Joy of Painting episodes when you just need a little encouragement in your life, whether or not you paint along. His entire message in all his gentle conversation as he paints is about the growth mindset, in an old-timey, grandfatherly kind of way. Bob Ross tells you that mistakes are okay, it doesn't have to be perfect, there's no wrong way to paint a tree/rock/cloud, just relax and try, don't agonize over every detail. It's so wonderful and soothing-- no wonder his show was on for 31 seasons.

Bob Ross's Joy of Painting with Kids

So, after my grown-up painting night, my son (11) was impressed with our results and eager to give a Bob Ross painting a try. Previously my kids have done several different online step by step painting projects, our favorites being from Step by Step Painting with Tracie Kiernan (see end of this post for pictures of one of those, as well as pandas and llamas above). Those projects are definitely simpler than Bob Ross's-- especially since she has a selection of paintings just for kids. But W was ready to try a little more of a challenge, so we went for it. Bob Ross's landscape pictures are all so pretty, it was hard to choose which one. My winter-loving son of course chose a snowy scene. 

We picked an afternoon when we didn't have to be anywhere at a certain time so we wouldn't feel rushed. We set up our area: the computer to play the episode, our canvases, all the brushes we own, a couple of paper towels, a cup of water for rinsing our brushes, a paper plate for each of us for mixing our paints. It went really well for a couple hours. We painted a background, mountains, clouds. It was so neat to see how different our paintings were turning out as we progressed; even though we'd both used the same two colors, the sky in each of our paintings showed two different moods entirely. 

Trying out his own technique for clouds

After a while, W started to get frustrated trying to paint his trees. He didn't like how his trees were turning out, so he painted over them and tried again. He proceeded to do this several times, getting more and more impatient with himself. I tried to remind him of Bob Ross's mantras. The trees don't need to be perfect. Everybody's trees will be different. Just go with it, relax, no pressure, it will all look good in the end as part of the whole painting. It was hard for him to hear any of that right then. He eventually walked away, took a break and a few breaths, and returned to paint a few last steps, and the paintings turned out great: 

I'm really glad my son and I tried out a Bob Ross painting. It was something creative we could do together. It was a chance to really focus on one thing for an extended period of time. It was a good challenge, for both of us. And, except for those few tense moments in the trees, it was a lot of fun. I think it's good to intentionally try new, hard things that stretch us and require persistence.

~

...Because of the time and challenge level, I think it was also a good choice that only my oldest tried the Bob Ross painting. But my daughter (7) didn't want to be left out of the painting fun. A few days later she and I painted beautiful, bright springy scenes of Mt. Fuji and cherry blossoms, from the StepbyStep painting site:  

In summary, any step by step painting project is a super fun, creative activity for all ages. Here's our tips on doing one, whichever source you choose.

Tips for Using Step by Step Painting Tutorials

1. Bob Ross paintings are best for adults and older kids-- tweens and up.
2. There are many good, free step by step painting sources online. Tracy Kiernan's site is a favorite for all ages, and better for younger kids.  
3. Clear a big surface area before starting the project.
4. Gather your tools: acrylic paints, brushes, water cup, paper towels, canvas, device to watch or read instructions from.
5. Acrylics work for Bob Ross paintings, even though he uses oil.
6. Don't worry if you don't have the exact tools or exact colors that the instructor does. Just use whatever you have that's close.
7. It's your painting; it's okay to choose a different color or to make other choices differently than the instructor.  
8. Watch, pause, paint, repeat. Don't try to paint and watch at the same time.
9. Make sure you have a significant chunk of open, free time before you start a painting-- two to three hours. It's no fun if you have to either rush, or have to clean it up and get it back out a second time. 
10. It's most fun if everyone painting agrees to do the same painting. Once I tried letting each of my kids choose a painting they wanted to do and I supervised and helped both of them pause and start their video on separate devices as needed. It was a little overwhelming for me to keep tabs on what step each of them was on, and they each felt in their own world (plus, I didn't get to paint myself). Much more fun to see your companions' different but similar pictures appearing next to yours and be able to encourage each other along, step by step. 
11. Try not to get frustrated and just have fun with it.