Search Results for: topic tag parents grandparents

Benefits of Bartering

My 8-year-old cries poor like the Pentagon before commencing a $10 billion nuclear weapon upgrade. Granted, she doesn’t get a regular allowance, but with grandparents like these, she wants for very little. Actually, she wants a lot, but as the only granddaughter, she typically gets it all, which is why I don’t give her an allowance. This, of course, has led to many heated discussions on money, spending habits and budgeting.  However, thanks to a recently covered Social Studies unit on our country’s earliest settlers, we’ve added a new topic to our financial discussions:  bartering. Bartering is the exchange of … Continue reading →

How My Ancestors Came to America

The other day, as I was taking a walk with my dad and my son, we talked a little bit about family history. I forget exactly how we arrived at the topic, but as we were talking, I found out a little bit about his parents and his grandparents. As a novice genealogy researcher, I realized that although I was interested in obtaining information about my ancestors from my dad, I was not interested in totally grilling him about everything under the sun regarding our heritage. With this in mind, I only talked about it for a little while before … Continue reading →

Why are YOU interested in genealogy?

Something occurred to me right after I decided to become a blogger on the topic of genealogy. I realized that it has been a long, long time since I did any genealogical research. I think the last time I conducted research about my family history was in middle school when my mom helped me make a family tree as part of a school project. A lot has changed since then, and while I have not yet acquainted myself with the modern tools of genealogical research like these free web resources, I am eager to see how far back in time … Continue reading →

Book Review: Adoption is a Family Affair–What Family and Friends Must Know

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Prolific adoption writer Patricia Irwin Johnston is herself an adoptive parent of three. Her husband and sister-in-law were also adopted. Pat has been a writer, speaker, educator and advocate on adoption topics for nearly 20 years. While moderating an internet support group for waiting parents, she found many prospective adoptive parents reporting insensitive comments and myths about adoption that they were hearing from family members. Many waiting parents also noted that people didn’t seem to know what to say when they announced that they were adopting, and that before and after the baby arrived they didn’t have the traditional supportive … Continue reading →

Kinship Foster Care

My last two blogs defined kinship adoption and discussed its advantages and disadvantages. This blog is about the related topic of kinship foster care. Some estimates say that nearly half of the children in foster care are living with relatives. This is very hard to measure, as many families may be taking care of grandchildren, nieces or nephews informally. As with kinship adoption, the major advantage of kinship foster care is that the children are with someone familiar instead of being further traumatized or frightened by being placed with strangers. Many children also find living with relatives to be less … Continue reading →

You Call That Homeschooling? Part Two

About six months ago, Valorie wrote a blog called You Call That Homeschooling. It’s excellent. Go read it. Well some messages from the last couple of days have me in a place where I am defending my mode of homeschooling. While it is a bit odd to turn someone else’s post into a series, this discussion was only fitting to put under the same category. If you read my post from this morning, Homeschool Resource Review: The Masters Academy of Fine Arts, then you know that someone has challenged the way I homeschool my kids as not really counting as … Continue reading →

Book Review–Kimchi and Calamari

My last blogs have featured adoption books for young children. I’m pleased to be able to talk about one aimed at the middle-school crowd. This age group is often hard to find books for. Parents want books that introduce adoption themes so that their kids can feel that there are other kids like themselves and also to spark discussion between parent and child. But most books are either children’s picture books, or teen novels dealing with heavy themes like child abandonment and searching, such as Throwaway Daughter. Kimchi and Calamari also touches on these themes, but in a light-hearted way. … Continue reading →

Fun Family Reunion Activities

No matter what type of family reunion you plan you will want some great activities. The best type of activity is one that requires a large number of people and discourages the forming of small groups. Get to know you activities are a great way to start, especially if it’s been a while since you have seen your relatives. Family Reunion.com lists some great ideas. Games are always a lot of fun. They can range from organized sports to board games. Check out some of the group games listed in Family Fun like Mother Elephant, The Sign Game, Robbers and … Continue reading →