During this unprecedented season when families are required to stay home and maintain social distancing, we want to be an encouraging and sustaining resource that will equip you with practical insights and tools to help you take hold of the opportunities for a productive and fruitful family time.

Our mission with OneFamily is to equip, encourage and sustain couples in their marriage and parenting journey.

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Parents everywhere are discovering more of the blessings and joy that this extended time at home is providing.  Here are last weeks tips in case you missed it: 3/29 Tips & Ideas

This week we want to pass along more ideas and encouragement:

  • Fun with Love Languages! As a family activity, take the love languages tests for adults and kids (ages 5+) together. We have the Emotional Touchpoints tests (adults & kids) on our resource page: https://onefamilyhwl.org/resources/. Share the results with each other and get creative with speaking each other’s love languages.

We would do the love language test periodically with our kids and put the results up on the refrigerator as a reminder to all of us.  The boys enjoyed getting in on this and giving Dad a back rub, to speak his love language of physical touch and closeness.  And they also enjoyed surprising each other in the other’s love language of quality time and physical touch and closeness.  When they were much younger, Trevor would go do something intentional with Alex like reading a funny book together while they laughed and laid next to each other before bedtime. This was a great way to teach them to show appreciation for each person in the family and the expressions of love have turned into wonderful memories for them and us!

  • Find a way to encourage others!  This week our wonderful neighbors and their kids surprised me with the sweetest birthday message written on our driveway in sidewalk chalk!  It brought us so much joy!  Ask your kids who they may want to surprise with a happy message to a friend, relative or neighbor? Or even to each other.  Such a simple thing is a built-in lesson in empathy and thoughtfulness, and goes a long way to building up these character traits in your kids.

Everyone has a gift that they can use to use to build up others. Check out this wonderful idea one woman for her neighborhood in Mesa, AZ: Chalk Hearts  Get creative as a family and make someone’s day, all the while making some lasting memories in the process.

 Quick Tips & Family Enrichment

  • Making things and experiments with pantry ingredients:
  • Write letters to friends and family members and mail them.
  • Make a family vision board – Print out pictures from Pinterest or Google and adhere them to a poster board or computer paper. Fill it with images of what you want this year to be, then hang it on the fridge or somewhere where everyone in the family will see it often.
  • Make a cardboard fort with those Amazon boxes and some duct tape.
  • Online Workshops & Classes – Add to your parenting toolbox and find encouragement during this unusual time! Online Zoom Workshops & Classes for parents available at:

https://onefamilyhwl.org/events/

This weekend’s workshop – Mealtime Manners & Behaviors – is booked full.  After Easter we’ll pick up with Encouraging Moms and Intentional Dads:

Saturday 4/18 – 3:00 to 4:15pm – http://evite.me/Ar4QCTCERD
or
Sunday 4/19 – 4:00 to 5:15pm – http://evite.me/WdCQYyCkSE

Please continue to send us your success stories, tips, ideas and best practices so we can share them with other families!  We’ve received some great ideas and look forward to passing them along to you each week!

Blessings to your family!

Shelly and Rich