6 Tips to Stay Connected when Back-to-School Schedules Explode

Clearly, packed schedules get in the way of family time - or family volunteering time. But how do you find that line between over-scheduled lives and the reasonable pursuit of interests and skills each family member values? Even with the best of intentions, our weeks fill up, time flies by, and we find ourselves struggling to connect with one another as school, activities, and work pull us in many different directions.

Honestly, I'm not here to authoritatively answer that question. My oldest is only in second grade.

I do feel qualified to share our methods. Somehow this little second grade girl has told me, "No."

She is saying no to extra activities this year. She came to me worried that she might be too busy to play with her sister and her friends. Or too busy to do some of the big-hearted activities we've come to love as a family.

So the brownie sash is packed away in her keepsake box. I'll have to find my cookies elsewhere.

Anyway, here are my six tips for strengthening family connections and keeping your sanity during this busy, back-to-school season. Feel free to add yours in the comments!

1) Set priorities: Too obvious? Maybe, but we all overlook this most basic of scheduling rules. Spend your next family dinner talking about (or re-affirming) your priorities, your family mission statement. You can keep it simple, or you can use these wonderful conversation starters from Simple Mom to take it deeper. Whatever you come up with, write it down and post your priorities somewhere handy for future reference.

2) Set limits: Maybe you want to draw the line at one activity per kid or at least three unscheduled days each week. Find what you are comfortable with, and defend your limits!

4) Eat Together:  If it weren't for Family Dinner, we wouldn't have heard much about second grade. There is something about assembling tacos and chasing beans around with a fork gets a kids' mind to wander. By the time her plate is (more or less) clean, I feel like I've been to second grade!

5) Do Good Together: Make room in  your schedule to volunteer together. Check out our projects page and sign up for our newsletter or our facebook feed for ideas to get you started. Also, watch for the launch of a brand new resource early  next month!

6) (Re) Establish Kindness Rituals: Rely on at least one daily ritual to reconnect. Reading at bedtime can seem redundant once your child reads on her own. Let me tell you, it's not. My daughters and their dad are taking turns reading chapters from Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, without a doubt their favorite time together. Or you could share your daily gratitude at the end of the day. Or dance together.  What are the daily rituals your family enjoys? Be sure to leave time for them as often as possible.

The transition to new schedules, new grade levels, homework, friends, and independence levels can be a stressful time for a family.

Remind yourself that less is more, in terms of scheduling. Even on the busiest weeks, build in a small moments of kindness. Connect with one another. You'll find these simple moments restore everyone's energy for the next big activity.

How do you keep reasonable control of your school schedule? How do you build in breathing room even on the busy weeks?

Collecting for a Cause

The start of the school year is the perfect time to establish or re-establish a habit of charitable giving. Here is a re-post from September 2010 to get you started! My family gave the change collected as a result of this post to a local food shelf. And then we let this habit lapse. Lately the kids have been hoarding change for their own amusement at the dollar store. I'm thinking it is time to repeat this activity!

This week in our effort to become a more giving family, we've started collecting our spare change for charity.

At 5 and just under 3, my girls aren't exactly money savvy. Still, they do have a stash of money in their piggy bank. When they raided those piggy banks to help our family become giraffe sponsors at the local zoo, I knew it was time to start saving for a cause.

Doing Good Together is a great resource for Charitable Giving. The girls and I spent an easy hour together decorating clean jars from the recycling bin. I cut the coin slot out of the lids while the girls went wild with markers and stickers.

We talked while we crafted about money. I learned that this is an intangible subject for them right now. To help them understand, we talked about all of the needs we have as a family: groceries, our house, water, electricity, and clothes. We talked about how these things cost money. We talked about earning money at a job. And how many people can't make enough money to pay for all of their needs.

I'm not sure how much sunk in, but they were certainly eager to start collecting for a cause.

Since their piggy banks were drained by our giraffe sponsorship, I contributed some from my own change jar. Seed money I told them.

Miss Kindergarten protested. "I don't want to buy seeds! I want to help the kids who don't have the things they need."

We had quite the conversation that day!

We have decided to wait until the jars are full before we make a donation anywhere. At that point, we'll find the right charity. For now, when they find wayward change around our house, they stash it in their jars. Their dad and I make contributions of our own. Thankfully, the jars are small, so they'll get the reward of giving soon.

Has your family made donations together? How have your kids responded?

Big-Hearted Gratitude: Siblings

This was our last week of summer. Expected to share a gratitude post celebrating the freedom and unscheduled joys of summer.

I'm certainly grateful for that.

But this week, more than anything, I have been grateful for the camaraderie between my kids. All three of them. Not that they don't fight now and then or tattle or drive one another nuts.

They do.

But they have spent so much time together this summer. Just the three of them, or just them and the neighbors. Now even Mr. Toddler is folded into their mixture of silly play and make believe.

It's a joy to watch.

Routinely practicing gratitude is a wonderful way to pause and really notice the best bits of our everyday lives. A habit of gratitude is proven to make us happier, less stressed, and even physically healthier. Not to mention the increase in generosity that naturally comes from a feeling of contentment and thankfulness.

Join me each week as my family takes a moment to practice gratitud.

Q & A Friday: Unexpectedly Unwelcome

Welcome to Q & A Friday! Where big-hearted parents like you need your help!

Join me in sharing your experience, suggestions, or additional questions in the comments section.

We'll all do our best to help each other out in the spirit of raising more compassionate, civic-minded kids in an age of cynicism.

My kids were so excited to deliver meals in our neighborhood. They even brought drawings to hand out with the meals.

But at one home the resident was quite upset by their intrusion on her regular schedule (though they never stepped inside - she seemed upset and confused when they tried to hand her some drawings).

How do I help them understand the situation from her perspective? And what's the best way for us to react?

~Stacy, Minneapolis, MN

Summer Bag of Tricks: Butterfly Birthday

For two summers now, I've led the girls through theme days to break up the (usually wonderful, occasionally monotonous) non-routine of summer. We've been ninjas and celebrated a bit of Japanese culture, we've been cavemen (um, cavegirls). Even pirates. We spent a few days last summer in character as the cast from The Magic Tree House.

This year we've celebrated the fire department, advocated for endangered species, posed as mermaids, created public art, and become kindness fairies.

Not all of our days have made it to the blog (I've been busy chasing Mr. Toddler). But they've all been memorable, recorded or not.

Our theme days usually begin with a costume. Always, we find a silly snack or lunch recipe to go with our theme. Often we make up a song. There are usually books, role playing games, and even the occasional field trip.

I always love passing the title of activity leader off to Miss Second Grader.

This week, she noticed that our monarch chrysalis, created by the first caterpillar she found on her own, was changing rapidly. It turned dark and then translucent, in the time it took us to eat breakfast. A final phase of the butterfly's transformation, telling us that the butterfly would soon emerge.

"It's butterfly day!" My second-grader exclaimed. "Let's have a butterfly birthday!"

And that's exactly what we did.

We read books about caterpillars and crafted butterfly decorations for our nature table. We wrote acrostic poems about butterflies, helping little Miss Not-Quite-5-In-Time-For-Kindergarten with her letter sounds.

And then, all of our waiting paid off. Miss Second Grader noticed a twitch. Then a crack.

"She's hatching!"

We watched in wonder as the wrinkly, soggy wings of our caterpillar-turned-butterfly emerged.

Of course, the snack was butterfly birthday cake.

(Nutritionists, please look away).

I actually allowed my children to feast on strawberry marshmallows topped with ready whip (left over from a neighborhood tea party) and sprinkles. In my defense, I felt reasonably sure that singing happy birthday to the butterfly before diving into our little sugar bombs indicated to everyone that this was a special occasion not to be repeated on any other random Tuesday.

While the butterfly's wings dried, we walked through our local park. Our plan was to hunt for other butterflies or caterpillars, but the call of summer lured us away to bike races and pool play.

The day ended when we let the birthday girl go. The whole neighborhood clapped and cheered as her brand new butterfly wings carried her over our garden fence and out into the wide world.

I look forward to the next child-selected, child-led theme day. There's nothing quite as satisfying as watching the kids take charge of their own curriculum and throw themselves into learning and play with such enthusiasm!

Kinder Book Club: Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun

This is a re-post from last fall. This book remains one of my kids' favorites (and spaghetti in a hot dog bun is one of their favorite silly meals). Check out the author Maria Dismondy's blogand website for excellent kindness and literacy resources. Just in time for the new school year, and the attendant social pressures, I stumbled across another great book.

Check out Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun: Having the Courage to be Who You Are by Maria Dismondy (author) and Kimberly Shaw-Peterson (illustrator).

This is exactly the sort of book that I once maligned (See Ordinary Mary, the very first Kinder Book club book). It's exceptionally sweet, it's message is the primary point, and it even comes with a list of "Be Kind" and "Be Yourself" proclamations in the end.

My appreciation for such books has grown in the last year (see Ordinary Mary's reappraisal), and this is an exceptionally well-done message book. As it turns out, kids, at least my kids, respond to this straight-forward, lesson-in-a-book sort of story.

Don't get me wrong, they love fabulously entertaining stories as well (check out our latest favorite, multiple Caldecott winner David Weisner). Still, we've had Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bunfor a couple of months now, and both girls often dig it out from their bedside book pile.

This simple story is about lovely, unique little girl who gets picked on by the class bully. When the bully finds himself stuck atop the monkey bars, our little friend is prepared to go tell him just how mean she thinks she is... that is, until she sees the tears in his eyes. She overcomes her own hurt feelings to help him out of his trouble, and in the end, she has made a new friend.

Though real life might not always unroll so easily, this story does, in fact, give kids the courage to be who they are. Whenever we finish this book, I try to ask a few pointed questions:

• How do you think Lucy felt when Ralph picked on her?
• Why do you think Ralph started teasing Lucy?
• What would you feel like doing if someone made fun of your lunch the way Ralph did?
• Lucy tried to tell Ralph how she felt. How did he react?
• Do you think it was easy for Lucy to help Ralph when he was stuck?

Bullying has been all over the news, thick in our state legislative discussions, and headlining teacher training conferences all year. Find some additional resources to help your child understand and address the issue of bullying as it arises this years.

• StopBullying.gov- This website offers a very simplistic message to both the bullied and the bully, but as I've seen, kids often respond to the most straight-forward approach. There are also helpful resources for teenagers, parents, and educators.
• Education.com - This website offers more extensive tips and tools for parents.
• National Bullying Prevention Center - This is a project of the PACER Center, whose helpful resources are distributed to parents and parent educators on every parenting topic you can think of.  Some of their classroom activities and songs would be useful for those of us who spend a lot of time at home with our kids, including a downloadable color book.
• Alarms.org - This site offers an excellent, simplified exploration of cyberbullying and what parents can do to prevent and address this growing problem.

Have you read Spaghetti on a Hot Dog Bun with your kids? How do you address the issue of bullying with your family?

Q & A Friday: Boring!

Welcome to Q & A Friday! Where big-hearted parents like you need your help!

Join me in sharing your experience, suggestions, or additional questions in the comments section.

We'll all do our best to help each other out in the spirit of raising more compassionate, civic-minded kids in an age of cynicism.

We've tried to set aside time for an easy, at-home kindness project.

My (6-y-o) daughter's reaction to decorating bags for Meals-on-Wheels was "that's boring."

How can I inspire her to participate?

~Andrew, St. Louis, MO

Our Favorite 5 Big-Hearted Election Books

There is no avoiding it. The political season is heating up. The observer-of-human nature in me is wishing for a Rip van Winkle-style sleep elixir that could carry me through to November (or December ?) when the result is finalized and we can all attempt to move past the vitriol. Instead, I simply remind myself over and over again that beneath our varying opinions on the way this country should be run, the vast majority of this country shares the same hopes for our children and our grandparents.

The mother in me is looking for a way to make sense of this process for my children. Nothing sets the stage for a thoughtful discussion with a 4 to 8-year-old quite like a good storybook. So here are our families favorite 5 election-related books. Feel free to add your favorites in the comments!

Duck for President, by Doreen Cronin:

This is one of our favorite books! This nutty story can be a starting place for teaching big ideas or for silly giggles. And as a parent, you'll find yourself making your own list: "at the end of each day he was covered with grass clippings, coffee stains.... "

If I Ran for President by Catherine Steir:

Six children discuss what they would do if they were running for president, describing the election process all the way from making the decision to run to being sworn in on Inauguration Day.

Grace for President by Kelly DiPucchio

Sure to be in nearly every classroom this fall, this book is my favorite combination of great storytelling with a lasting message. When Grace discovers that there has never been a woman president of the Unites States, she decides that she will run for president one day. Her teacher encourages her by holding a school election.

We the Kids by David Catrow

Though it is meant of an older audience, Little Miss Four enjoys the pictures and the whole family learns a little something. With laugh-out-loud cartoony illustrations, and the actual words of the Preamble as the only text, Catrow depicts a camping trip taken by a diverse, bumbling group of friends, demonstrating the rights and responsibilities the Constitution places on all Americans, young and old.

My Teacher for President by Kay Winters

This book is a perfect way to teach kids about presidential responsibilities, elections, and the power of writing a letter to the editor. If enough of us read this one, Oliver's teacher just might win with a write-in vote this November!

What election-related books does your family enjoy?

Q & A Friday: Reflection and Family Volunteering

Welcome to Q & A Friday! Where big-hearted parents like you need your help!

Join me in sharing your experience, suggestions, or additional questions in the comments section.

We'll all do our best to help each other out in the spirit of raising more compassionate, civic-minded kids in an age of cynicism.

We volunteer as a family monthly, but I have a hard time getting my 9 year old to have meaningful conversations about what we've seen and learned. He usually answers my questions with the obvious "here is what mom's looking for" answer and an exasperated tone....

How can I get him to be a little more thoughtful?

~Elizabeth, Broken Arrow, OK

Test Subjects, Kindness, & the Scientific Process

This summer, we're a family of guinea pigs. Like you (I suspect), we are fans of curiosity, of science, and of teaching the art of independent thinking to our children.  Thanks to the wonderful university at our finger tips, each of the kids has participated in at least one study at the Institute of Child Development. I've talked to more than a few friends who have signed their kids up as well.

Our trip to campus was an outstanding field trip for the kids. Our participation in the studies gave the girls, especially Miss Second Grader, an opportunity to think about the research process. She even asked a few questions of the researchers we met.

Plus it gave us a great opportunity to talk about a unique new way to volunteer our time. As Little Miss Four said, "if they can study us and a lot of other kids, maybe they can help us all learn and grow really well."

Well put little one!

Here is a great link to get your kids started with sociological research.

If you participate in or conduct studies of your own, be sure to help your kids think through the potential impact of this sort of science on other children and families.

Summer Bag of Tricks: Endangered Species Day

These last days of summer seem a little manic.  Lately we have been racing through our "summer bucket list," making impromptu appearances at the many amazing fairs dotting the map, and tackling back-to-school organization efforts. Even as the school year casts a long shadow of the dog days of summer, we're taking a little time for some DGT-style fun.

Look out Fire Safety Day and Magic Wand Day, Endangered Species Day was a completely kid-driven day of educational fun.

It began when Little Miss Four brought her tiger and cougar figurines to breakfast. I mentioned the word endangered in my endless "mom chatter" (You know what I mean, right? Tell me I'm not the only mom who catches myself mid-sentence wondering  how I got from "do you want raisins in your oatmeal" to "I wonder how many varieties of grapes can grow in Minnesota?)

The next thing I knew, we were executing Endangered Species Day. Here's what we did, i case you'd like to join us.

Step 1: Research

• EndangeredSpecies.com: Spend time learning about endangered animals with your child, then follow one of their great suggested activities.
• World Wildlife Fund: Research specific species and discover how you can help protect them.
• U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: Look locally for endangered species in your own state with this interactive map.

Step 2: Take Action

Thanks to the suggestion of EndangeredSpecies.com the kids were inspired to take immediate action. Miss Second Grader led the effort.

1. The girls discovered endangered animals native to our own state.
2. They created Endangered Species artwork, drawing a picture of their selected animal as well as its primary threat.
3. Then we sent our drawings along with letters to local and state representatives.

This was as fun and engaging for my four-year-old as it was for my seven-year-old!

Step 3: Field Trip!

We're fortunate enough to have two local zoos within a half hour of the house. Both are dedicated to informing visitors about the animals they host, intentionally working to inspire the next generation of environmental stewards even as they research solutions to current problems. After a morning of research about the meaning of the word "endangered," Miss Second Grader read every sign and jotted down a few notes, while her younger siblings pointed and waved at our exotic neighbors.

Step 4: Meatless Meal Makeover

Our second-grade-level research it clear that habitat loss is the leading threat to most endangered species. And habitat is being cleared at a dizzying pace in order to feed the world's growing population.

According to the UN's Food and Agricultural Division, diets rich in meat and dairy account for 40% of global land use and 70% of fresh water use worldwide. Swapping out a few meals each week with vegetarian alternatives may be one simple way our family can make a difference right away.

Thankfully, the kids will gobble up brown rice and black beans with just a few spices. That has become a lunchtime staple. For dinner on endangered species day, I fixed my favorite vegetable lasagna, with nearly all of the produce plucked straight from our garden (clearly a habitat-friendly option).

Building a whole day of fun around one basic lesson or idea has helped us make some unique memories this summer. This is a method that definitely gets our whole family thinking, talking, playing, and problem solving about big issues.

Big-Hearted Gratitude: Backyard Bounty

If you dabble in gardening, I'm guessing you just might share my family's gratitude this week: backyard garden treasures. Whether yours is a container garden on the patio, an ever-expanding section of the yard, or even simply a favorite stall at the local farmers market, take a moment with us to be truly grateful for summer produce!

Routinely practicing gratitude is a wonderful way to pause and really notice the best bits of our everyday lives. A habit of gratitude is proven to make us happier, less stressed, and even physically healthier. Not to mention the increase in generosity that naturally comes from a feeling of contentment and thankfulness.

Join me each week as my family takes a moment to practice gratitude.

Getting Warmer

Welcome to the Big-Hearted Families Blog! I'm so glad you've popped over to our blog.

I do hope you are enjoying the rest of our wonderful new site. It is full of  resources, tools, and inspiration to keep your family practicing kindness even on the busiest of weeks.

For the moment, Big-Hearted blog posts can still be found over at Doing Good Together. Follow us on Facebook for post updates or check back a few times a week to see what's new.

I especially hope you check out the Q&A Friday posts, where we need your expertise to help other Big-Hearted Families like YOU!

Starting September 1, this will be the home of Doing Good Together's Big-Hearted Blog. Welcome to the conversation!

Q & A Friday: Big-Hearted Chapter Books

Welcome to Q & A Friday! Where big-hearted parents like you need your help!

Join me in sharing your experience, suggestions, or additional questions in the comments section.

We'll all do our best to help each other out in the spirit of raising more compassionate, civic-minded kids in an age of cynicism.

Could you recommend some chapter books (for my 8 and 10 year olds) that we could read as part of a compassionate family book club?

~anonymous, Duluth, MN