Isn't it true? Grandparents' very special love sets them apart? My husband and I both have so many fond memories of our special times with our grandparents, so when we began having a family of our own, one of our struggles was that our own children lived SO far away from their grandparents. We yearn for them to grow up KNOWING their grandparents, EXPERIENCING their love, and CREATING fabulous memories with these special people in their lives. We have flown across oceans, driven thousands of miles across states, Skyped for hours, talked on the phone, mailed letters and art projects (yes, we still utilize snail-mail frequently...even in this e-mail world), and strived to make long distances shorter in an effort to build relationships because my husband and I feel that relationships are essential. We were designed to be relational people, and we are determined to not allow our society's acceptance of superficial Internet and mobile phone connections to impede our desire for true relationships to develop. It is the main reason that we opted for Scott to attend school in Iowa. IOWA? People kept inquiring, "Why did you choose IOWA?!!?" "You could go to Monterey, California, you could go anywhere in the U.S., and you chose....IOWA?!?" To which we replied, "We're going HOME!" It was our an opportunity to get our children closer in proximity to the grandmas and grandpas, an opportunity for Scott and me to spend more time with our grandparents, and a chance to be closer to family, and, as a result, for us, IOWA made perfect sense. We wanted priceless memories to be formed.
I am a proponent of immersing children in literature. Children's literature is all over for our children, and in the most random of moments, I glance up and see our children perusing through books....in their bedrooms, at the coffee table, on the couch, in their forts, in their "school room," in the car, and pretty much everywhere except the bathroom. The concept of books in the bathroom has always kind of grossed me out, so we don't have them there, but if you look elsewhere, chances are, you'll spy a children's book! Typically, I try to have the books that we'll be reading for school in the weeks ahead out and about, too, and one in particular caught Brynn's eye right away, Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say. She asked me repeatedly when we were going to read that story. She asked so much in fact that I changed my intended order of teaching to accommodate her yearning for this one particular book (which she had already read SEVERAL times on her own and practically had memorized before it even became the instructional book of the week). Somebody LOVES her grandparents....can you tell? She initially coined them as "Pop Pop" and "Mop" (to the chagrin of the grandmas), but now it is "Grandma" and "Grandpa," and she knows that they are FULL of wisdom and willing to share it.
So, we delved into Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say.
Included in this week, was an interactive Keynote presentation that I created on the iPad with many imbedded applications for the girls to explore and learn. Here are some snapshots of our learning:
The highlight of the week for the girls was definitely recording their interview questions for their grandparents on iTalk and e-mailing their recorded questions off. The grandparents were all quick to respond to questions about their childhoods, teaching the girls that:
Grandparents definitely "keep a family close at heart!" And, for the girls, exploring their own grandparents' journeys was priceless!
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