31 Days to Inspire a Child {Day 31}: for the long haul

Occasionally my sister and I have parenting panic attacks on the telephone.  What if we have the best intentions but completely fail at this job called parenting?  Do you ever have those moments?  It's a weighty job.

When I'm having one of those days where I feel less than inspired, I always come back to a comforting concept.  Parenting is a long haul job.  It's not about having perfect children that make me look like I'm doing a great job right this second.  It's about leading my child to eventually choose Christ with all that he is.  

Along the way, they are going to have bad days.  I'm going to have bad days.  But thankfully there is always more grace.  I have to remind myself that if I live authentically before them -- loving them and loving God in my own broken state -- by the grace of God, I will have done my job well.  

Enjoying the ride and cutting myself some necessary slack is important.  I'm not very inspirational when I'm burying myself in guilt for who I am not.  This week I've been reading Grace for the Good Girl by Emily Freeman.  I am motivated to live in the freedom of Christ, even and especially as I parent my children.

___________________________

Thank you so much for hanging out with me these 31 days.  I can't believe it's already come to a close.  I have a lot more to say, so I'm still going to be here.  Writing.  I'd love it if you still came back reading.  Please consider following my feed or subscribing for free to receive my posts via email (at the top right of the screen), or just keeping stopping by!  A big thank you to The Nester for getting this 31 Days party started.  It's been so much fun!  I've found so many wonderful people with wonderful blogs because of it.  And, most of all, I have been thoroughly encouraged along the way.

31 Days to Inspire a Child {Day 30}: Toys that Inspire

I can't believe it's already Day 30.  Now I feel at a loss of what to post for the last two days.  It feels like it should be something of major consequence.  Instead, I'm going to talk about toys.

My favorite inspirational toys are open-ended ones that promote creativity.  Intermixing these toys brings endless creative play.  Here are my top ten favorites:

1.  Cardboard Blocks.   Some days I wonder why I didn't purchase these sooner.  Not a day goes by that these are not pulled out multiple times, playing countless roles.  Among the most popular:  a Wipe-out obstacle course, an Angry Bird set-up, a shark tank, and a tunnel for their train sets.  These blocks have also been transformed into an airplane (two blocks per seat, together forming rows of seats), lily pads, towers, fortresses, snow shoes, pet houses and a kangaroo.

2.  Wooden Train Set.  We bought our train table and train set on clearance when Matthew was about 18 months old.  It has been used almost every day since.  As the years go by, creating track layouts has become a complicated feat of engineering, joyfully passing away many afternoons.  We love mixing plastic animals in to create a zoo train and adding wood blocks or Mega Blocks to create buildings and tunnels.  Construction paper is a great way to add ever-changing lakes, parks and even snowy/icy areas for arctic landscape.

3.  Animals.  Stuffed, plastic and Little People animals have all been well-loved in this house.  They have endless uses, like playing zoo, aquarium, farm, veterinarian, pet store, jungle explorers and animal rescuers.

4.  Marble run.  Though this can technically only do one thing, the configurations are endless.  We also combine it with dominos to create more diverse layouts.  For $20, it's definitely a wonderful creative toy to own.  Anything that you can spend an hour building before the official playing begins is a great toy in my book.

5.  Legos.  It probably goes without saying.  I also love MegaBlocks for the younger years.

6.  Matchbox cars.  I don't know what it is about them, but my boys could play with these for hours.  Sometimes half the fun is in the choosing which cars to race.  Or sorting them and lining them up.  And of course, racing them.  And crashing them.  In this same category are toy trucks and airplanes.  My mom and Matthew used to spend hours playing air show, lining up the display planes, filling up the parking lots with spectator cars, then enacting the actual show.

7.  Kitchen and play food.  It's not just for girls.  I love that you can play so many things with play food.  House, chef, restaurant and grocery store.  So many awesome opportunities.  My favorite spin is when we play restaurant.  We usually start by first designing our restaurant -- naming it, making menus, then we get to the playing.  I love any activity you can draw out for hours of creative fun.

8.  Board Games.  Board games are a great way to connect and interact.  I love sharing them.  You don't have to limit yourself to the typical kid games.  I like to branch into adult games too.  Matthew loves playing kid-modified Scrabble with us.  When he was little, I used Boggle dice to play a letter recognition game with him, and later to practice letter sounds.  He loved it because he was playing with our grown-up stuff.  To change things up, we also like to start with a standard game in our closet and then springboard into something new; Matthew uses his Sorry game as a starting point for lots of homemade games.

9.  Dress-up Clothes.  We were slow getting into this, but both boys have had so much fun with costumes this past year.  Especially when their friends come over.

10.  Construction Paper.  If we don't have a toy, we make it.  Every ball in our house has been transformed into an angry bird.  We've made every animal costume imaginable -- bald eagles, cats, birds, kangaroos and even the Backyardigans.  Construction paper might be the most versatile thing in our whole house.  Construction paper for the win.

31 Days to Inspire a Child {Day 29}: why i cried at vbs

A friend of mine once told me that his home life was so messed up as a child that he would not be of sound mind if not for the gospel.  The gospel and its rescue reached into his world via a young friend who invited him to church one day.  He told me this late one night, over ten years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it.

In fact, it was what brought me to tears as I stared at the sweet faces in our little circle of fifth-grade girls on our final day of vacation bible school this summer.  These girls can take the gospel to people that I never could.  They can bring sanity and hope into hopeless places.  Everywhere they walk they take with them the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ.  At their lockers, on their bikes, with their kindness, quirk and giggles.  They take it with them.  It goes before them.  I love that parade of triumph as I picture them walking into school with the gospel on their backs.

The knowledge of a big God coming from the mouth of a little body is a beautiful, wondrous, tear-jerking thing.  Sometimes when you want someone to know something so badly, all you can do is cry.

31 Days to Inspire a Child {Day 28}: share your passion

I love doing all kinds of projects with Matthew and Nolan.  But some of my favorite moments happen when I'm sharing one of my passions with them.  I love reading, so every time we read together, I feel that joy.  I also love learning, so learning about new things together is really exciting.  I have a passion for children's books; when Matthew and I staple a pile of paper together and make our very own book, clouds part, birds chirp and rainbows fill the sky.

Architecture, design and illustration are each a huge part of who I am.  A fun part.  So when Matthew suggested making a city out of left-over cardboard from a New York skyline I made for Vacation Bible School this summer, it was the recipe for one of my favorite days ever.  Seriously, it was so much fun that I almost felt guilty.  But Matthew's excitement level matched mine, so it was a win-win.

We each designed are own buildings, often consulting each other about what our town needed.  It turned out to be a great, impromptu social studies lesson, with a side of architecture.  We talked about signage and the difference between a public street side and a service back side.  I created a school, a luxury apartment complex and a bookstore.  He create a pet store, an aquarium, an office building, and our favorite lunch spot -- Cheli's Chili Bar.

Nolie joined the fun and scribbled on his own high-rise cardboard scrap.  Not to be outdone, Matthew grabbed a taller scrap and the official skyscraper race began.  In the end Matthew taped on an extra tower to the top of his to secure the victory.  It's funny how art mimics life.  Our last building was a three-story Apple Store, because every town's gotta have one of those.

Once we finished, we set them up in the basement with little paperdoll-esque stands and made plans for a park, a baseball stadium and a large monument.  Our poor town has since gotten semi-demolished by a rogue cozy coupe and a crazy two-year-old, but the fun lives on.

So, share your passion -- whatever it is -- just for the fun of it.  If you're enjoying yourself, they probably are as well.  And who better to share your passion than you.

31 Days to Inspire a Child {Day 27}: Project Inspiration

Yesterday I talked about our fun day inspired by If I Built a Car.  Inspiration for mixed media, book-inspired creative moments can come from anywhere.  Here are a few of our favorite book-inspired moments from this year:

One fabulous day, Matthew and I delved into Chris Van Allsburg's crazy world of Jumanji.  As soon as we finished the story, Matthew jumped up, ready to create his own board game.  Click {here} to read an account of that perfect book-inspired afternoon.

Kali Stileman's book, Roly-Poly Egg, inspired an afternoon of finger painting, google-y eyes and beaks.  It was a perfect all-ages project.  Nolan's purple bird was my favorite.

This summer an abandoned hummingbird feeder on our back deck led to an interest in birds.  We filled it up with red nectar and were all entranced by the wonder of our tiny visitors.  Lois Ehlert and Betsy Franco both created beautiful collage art books full of wonderful winged creatures.  Our family highly recommends Feathers for Lunch and birdsongs.  They are the perfect kid-inspired science books, packed with thoughtful, factual information, brought to life with gorgeous artwork. Following their lead, Matthew created his own bird watching book, using their artwork as a guideline.  A few days later, both boys painted dollar store birdhouses to hang outside.

Moments like this don't have to be elaborate or pre-planned.  The opportunities are as endless as your child's interests and imagination.  If you just look for windows of opportunity and go with the flow, learning, creativity and fun collide.  Projects like this generate interest in the subject matter, reinforce the material and create wonderful memories.  And, for a bonus, they are also an easy way to fill a chilly afternoon.

31 Days to Inspire a Child {Day 26}: mixed media magic

My mom gave Matthew this awesome building set for Christmas last year. It's called ZoobMobile. It sat on the shelf until a couple months ago. Now we've been having all kinds of fun with it. Most often we make race cars, one for each of us, and have a big race.

When I saw If I Built a Car at the library, I loved it for two reasons. One, it reminded me of the House of Tomorrow segment I used to love during the Looney Tunes on Saturday mornings as a child. I used to imagine all kinds of inventions after seeing those bits. Two, I knew that Matthew would be totally geeked about imaginary car design after reading it.

I checked it out of the library and kept it quietly aside, waiting for the right day and the right moment. One afternoon, while Nolan was napping and Matthew and I were Zoob-ing, I pulled out the book. I had barely finished before Matthew jumped up and ran to the kitchen table, just as I thought.

We whipped out the markers and tracing paper and each designed our own crazy If-I-Built-a-Car cars. Mine had auto-pilot, a bed, and lots of bookshelves. Matthew's had a multilevel aquarium, a pool and a water slide. We had a blast.

These kind of extended moments don't happen every day, but when they do -- they feel like a little bit of magic. Sometimes I plan for the magic; sometimes it transpires completely accidentally.  And, to be honest, sometimes it flops. But when it works, I wish my eyes were video cameras to capture the whole thing for slo-mo replay when I'm old.

31 Days to Inspire a Child {Day 25}: say yes to questions

One essential ingredient to gaining knowledge is the belief that there are answers to our questions. People who ask questions learn things. But, in real life, when why is your toddler’s favorite word and your older child loves to hear himself talk, it’s easy to tune out the questions.

But those questions are key to inspiration.

Little minds want answers. They want to figure things out. The saddest thing is when they learn not to ask the questions anymore. When their curiosity dies a slow death from lack of attention, lack of information, or lack of affirmation.

But let's face it, sometimes we don't know the answer to the question. Or we just can't open our mouth to answer one more why that day. When I heard the idea of a Question Jar I knew it was a keeper. Of course I'm not organized enough to have an actual decorated, dedicated jar, but we did immediately implement the idea.

Most of our questions happen in the car. When I don't know the answer, or (as is most often the case) Matthew doesn't trust my answer, we do one of two things. I tell him to write it down when we get home and put it in our question pile. (Yep, it's that non-glamorous). Or I tell him to remind me to Google it as soon as we get home.

Since I'm a procrastinator, I try to most often answer the question immediately (to make sure that it doesn't fall through the cracks). So we do a lot of Googling. Which is great because it shows tons of photographs and information at the click of a button.

When we have more time or the question is more involved, we add in some other methods. If it's a question that he could ask dad, grandma or grandpa, we encourage that route. If it's something that can wait long enough for a trip to the library, we'll grab a book about it at our next visit. Having the option to the write the question down and set it aside buys some time while also sending the message that asking questions is good. Because it is -- so good.