How do you use Character Sketches with your kids...

[Tina in WA]

I have all 3 volumes (heard about them, think they are great, got them for a great deal at 2nd hand store), and I am not sure how to implement using them with my children (4 kids, aged at home 15 to 10).

 

So I am wondering how to other homeschoolers implement these wonderful books into their lessons/family time?

 

TIA,

 

Tina

[Tina in WA]

Bump

[frankcassiesmom]

I have 2 volumes and have yet to use them. I LOVE them but don't use them. I guess I need to pull them out and look at them again. I might just read one a day as part of our "together" time first thing as school starts where we do hymns, memory work, etc.

[Tina in WA]

Thanks for posting. :-) I am starting to wonder if a lot of folks that have these books are like us: own them, but don't use them.

 

I am bumping again, hoping that someone here uses them and is able/willing to share how they use them.

[ChicoryChick]

It has been a couple of years since we used these and my husband usually is the one who reads them to the children in the evening after supper M-F. 1st night) The animal story with them guessing what the animals is and telling them the character trait & definition. 2nd night) uestions and more information about the animal. Review Character Trait. 3rd Night - Finish the animal, start the Bible character (have them guess the Bible character). Review Character Trait 4th & 5th nights) finish reading about the Bible Character and again review the Character Trait.

 

Hope this helps.

[PeterPan]

Well my dh spent quite a bit of time over the past few years reading them to dd in the evenings. Nothing formal, just open and read before bed. I'm not sure about ages 10-15. The 10 would be fine. I'll confess I picked up the associated coloring books from a vendor at the convention and had this cool idea about using them as handwriting and memory verses next year... The pictures are sort of like Dover, very detailed, which for us is good (strengthens the hands).

 

If you have several kids, you might like to spice things up. Like take one character trait and have everyone do a different animal or story about it. Then at the end of the week everyone does a short speech (2 minutes) with a visual they made. Or use the animal and trait as your theme for the week, doing the memory verses and then creating art to go with it. My dd enjoys using google image to pull up pics and create screen savers. You could make all sorts of art, something different every week. You save the screensavers as a jpg, so then you could print them into a book. You could get them printed as t-shirts. You could make posters or a collage. I mean it's just the sky as the limit. I've had her doing that with her dogs, making screen savers with dog images and verses to illustrate. It's very fun. You could make a character book and put them in alphabetical order, then publish at the end of the year. And of course you have your group dynamic things, like maybe something fun with little tokens they can award each other for modeling the target character trait. Then at the end of the week the person with the most tokens gets an ice cream cone or other award.

[blessed2five]

We use these wonderful books to reenforce and teach character to our dc. Each month we choose a new character trait to focus on and read the pages that correspond with the trait we are learning about.

 

I also have the coloring books that go along with them and make copies so all the younger children can color while I am reading.

 

My kids and I love these books!

[Tina in WA]

Thanks so much for the replies and sharing how you use them. My dh reads to my kids often; I like that other dads read these too. I will look into this more (even the coloring pages) and see if we (he) could do this before bedtime too. Thanks again! :-)