December 28 - January 3 // New Years Celebrations, Family Time Capsule, Vision Casting, the Hobbit and More!
Here are a ton of ways to bring in the new year, have meaningful family discussions, and think through important stuff that will set the course for the rest of your year.
Happy New Year! People usually make an extra effort to be purposeful and productive at the beginning of the year, so let’s ride that momentum and aim to grow in purpose and productivity in January. This week, we’ll figure out the most important part: why.
This email is packed, but please don’t be overwhelmed. Take what is practical and doable for your family, and you can always try other things later. And check out this week’s meal inspiration if you haven’t already.
May this week be reflective and full of hope.
January's Theme: Becoming Purposeful and Productive
Activity: New Year’s Eve Family Party (+ printable)
Parenting Pep Talk: What Are We Trying To Do Here?
Thoughtfulness: Make + Give a Time Capsule (+ printables)
Mini-Challenge: Vision-Casting Worksheets (+ printables)
Book Club: The Lazy Genius Way, Chapters 1-3
Older Kid Book Club: The Hobbit, Chapters 1-3
Picture Books: Over and Over, Journey, Wolf in the Snow, Strega Nona
Activity: NYE Family Party
Activity idea overload here. Do whatever works for your family…and it doesn’t all have to happen on NYE. (And don’t forget the sparkling grape juice! You can get champagne flutes from Dollar Tree. Frozen grapes add a nice touch!)
If you don’t feel like letting the kids stay up till midnight, just stay up until it’s midnight in another time zone. You can use this site to see when other places celebrate the new year. If you have a globe, set it next to an analog clock that’s in the timezone you’ve chosen.
For example, if you live in EST and want your kids to stay up until 10 pm, you can celebrate an Argentinian New Year because it’ll be midnight in Buenos Aires by then. You could play some Argentinian music, make empanadas, or show them pictures of the neighborhood of La Boca and encourage them to recreate their own with paper and glue (see above.) We glued ours onto cardstock and lined them up together. It was a big hit!
You can do a balloon drop at the midnight of your choice 😏 by taping a dollar store shower curtain to the ceiling, filling it with balloons, and attaching a pull-string, as they did here.
Draw a cute Baby New Year together with this Art for Kids Hub tutorial. It’s a great, low-pressure time to ask your kids how they feel about the new year.
Even a 3-year-old can enjoy this activity! Make fireworks with glue, salt, and watercolors. You basically just make curved, then a few more arches. Cover with salt, shake off, then invite your kids to add whatever colors they wish. It’s messy but very satisfying.
Learn some dance moves! Grownups and older kids can challenge themselves with these satisfying dance moves; younger kids might want to learn this dance to “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” and you can always just play a game of Dance Freeze.
Design a 2022 Family Time Capsule! Decorate a shoebox or small tote for your family and label it as this year’s time capsule. Throughout the year, add in ticket stubs, wedding invites, event brochures, kid art (and grownup art, too 😉), and random mementos of the good and hard times throughout the year.
You can also write letters to the kids that they can open later, and they can write letters to their End-of-2022 Selves. Looking through these will be a big blessing to your family at the end of the year.
Here are some printable decorations you can cut out or color for your family’s box. (If you have our Memory Book, this is all printed out for you already!)Most importantly, sit around and ask your family some questions. Feel free to print this out and cut the squares into cards 😊
Parenting Pep Talk: What Are We Trying To Do?
It's almost 2022! Though the New Year is just another day, it's an excellent chance for a fresh start. But before we get hyped about resolutions, let’s determine our “why."
What are we trying to accomplish with our time, resources, skills, and attention?
That’s an enormous question that determines how and why you do everything in your life; it’s certainly worth asking. When you are an individual, that’s one thing, but when you have children in your care, what you can accomplish both shrinks and broadens.
You might not be able to fly overseas to join the peace corps, or you might not be able to hang out with friends whenever you want—but getting to love a person all day? Getting to be the most important influence in their life? Raising the next generation (who will then raise generations after that?
In Habits of the Household, Justin Earley calls the home “the school of love.” Isn’t that wonderful?
It's unhelpful to place burdens on our kids for how we expect them to turn out, of course...but creating a solid vision, or even a daydream, of what kind of nucleus this home of ours can be? That makes household chores and long nights with an infant seem a lot less futile.
We are loving and teaching how to love. The way you love your kids is, in an exponential way, shaping the culture of now and the future.
As we enter 2022 and focus on shaping our families to be more productive, think about the kids in your care as if they’re saplings that are growing to be beautiful trees that create shade, produce oxygen, and captivate with beauty, and provide homes. Close your eyes and enjoy the song “Planting Trees” by Andrew Peterson, in which he says this:
"So many years from now //
Long after we are gone //
These trees will spread their branches out //
And bless the dawn."
Daydream about what could happen now, and a hundred years from now, if the kids in your care truly flourish.
This Week’s Thoughtfulness:
Get a time capsule box ready for another family and encourage them to store away their own memories. Maybe you can give them their first special memento!
Again, here are some printables you can use:
Mini-Challenge: Vision-Casting Worksheets
Normally we have a challenge for the whole month, but this month we’re breaking it up. This week, your goal is to work through these worksheets to think about your family’s vision, mission, roles, goals, and rhythms. Don't worry, we explain lots more and provide samples 😉) A shift in intentionality here could transform the life and future of your family. We put a lot of thought into these and hope they hhHere'sere'sa PDF file of them.
Book Club: The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi, Introduction through Chapter 3
Whether you're reading/listening to The Lazy Genius Way or not, here are some key quotes:
“Be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things don’t.”(pg 7) What does that mean? What are some things you might feel like you need to be really good at that you really don’t? What important things would you really like to be better at doing?
“Constant decision-making is one of the reasons you don’t have energy for things that matter to you. By discovering a few opportunities to decide once and then never again, you give your brain more room to play.”(pg 21) What are some decisions with your schedule, wardrobe, traditions, gift-giving, etc. that you can “decide once” to simplify your life? Challenge: implement one of those to start.
“Movement, not necessarily a finish line, is the new goal.”(pg 38) What matters that you could make a tiny bit of progress in for the long-term? (She used the example of doing one yoga pose a day to increase her flexibility. Only 15 seconds a day yielded great results over time and became a habit.)
Older Kid Book Club: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, Chapters 1-3
Whether you’re reading/listening to The Hobbit or the graphic novel adaptation or not, these quotes should encourage you :)
"We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them." How do you define ‘adventure’? Would you dare to believe that caring for others, even at a cost to yourself, is probably the most extraordinary adventure you’ll find?
"It would have made only a tiny pocket-knife for a troll, but it was as good as a short sword for the hobbit." The gifts and abilities you have might feel small, but they’re yours, and you can use them quite well. What gifts do you have that might seem like a pocket-knife to others but are as useful as a sword because they’re yours?
Picture Books
Here are some books your family might enjoy reading together this week!
Links are to Youtube videos of people reading these stories. Each book is, of course, better to be read in person, and you can probably find it at your library. Sarah Mackenzie has tons of January picture book recommendations here.
Journey by Aaron Becker is a wordless book that tells the first part in an epic trilogy…yep, with only ppictuIt'sIIt'sbeautiful.
The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats is a sweet book about a snow day in the city that just might reawaken childlike wonder in each person who rreadsThere'sere'salso a sweet 39-minute movie on Amazon Prime based on that book.
The Magical Yet by Angela DiTerlizzi and Lorena Alvarez talks about reframing your fears and self-doubts and feeling hope about what you can achieve with practice and perseverance. The personified “Yet” is a little cheesy, but the art is beautiful, and the concept is a good one for kids (and grownups) to have stored away.
Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola is a very re-readable favorite to get your family ready for National Spaghetti Day on January 4th.
From Our Hearts
Parents and caregivers of children,
May your new year begin with freshness and hope.
May you feel inspired and ready to love the young people in your care relentlessly.
May you fail well—and transparently—so your kids can learn how to fail well, too.
May your kids know that you have dreams for them and that you want them to thrive more than you want money, travel, or any of the other things you might’ve given up for them.
Most of all, may your kids know that they are deeply, securely, unconditionally loved.
We are truly praying these things for you and your family.
From our hearts,
Hope Henchey and the Family Scripts team
See you next week!