Hello friends. I am AmberLee and I blog at GiversLog, where I write tutorials and offer gift ideas and even have projects to do with little ones. I am so thrilled to be stopping by Chocolate on my Cranium (a long-time blog favorite of mine!) I’m here to share a few favorite ideas for long-distance family bonding.
I think the best thing about bonding time is that every family has their own way of doing it. When I get together with my family, we cook, my husband’s family plays SPOONS competitively, usually breaking at least one piece of furniture. As for my own little family, we dance our hearts out in the family room. It’s always so good to just be together.
A year or more ago, we started a couple new ideas took our bonding a few generations deeper.
Idea One: Five-Minute Family Story
Once a week we have a family night. Brilliant idea, I know. Unfortunately I can’t take credit. Family Home Evenings are something our church encourages us to keep up. My kids are 7, 5, and 1, and they love it. A whole hour of attention from mom and dad at the same time. We have a few things we always do. We sing a song together, say a prayer together, and as of a year ago, we read a short piece of family history.
Often we keep it simple. We look at a family blog entry and find out what we were doing a year ago. Or we read to the kids about when they were babies from a journal. (I am a veracious journal keeper. If only I were so good about the laundry and the mending). Often we dig into stories from a family history binder my MIL gave us (thanks, Mom!) Sometimes we come up with a question for a grandma or grandpa, aunt or uncle and call them on the spot. Occasionally, we’ll act out a favorite story as a puppet show (see my theater how-to right here).
The response from our children has floored us. My children speak of great great grandparents as if they’re familiar, like they just came back from a visit at their house. We discover similar likes and dislikes between the kids and grandparents. And one day we were driving when my daughter said of a Grandfater she’d met only as a baby, “I miss Grandpa John.” Of course this had me sitting in the front seat wiping away tears.
The best part about this idea is that we’ve managed to keep it simple, so it has been totally doable. We can pull it off week after week.
Idea Two: Long-Distance Bed Time Stories
One other favorite idea we’ve tried for family bonding across generations is this. We have Grandpa call and read bedtime stories to the kids. The kids already need a story and Grandpa needs some kids to read to. The kids love being tucked into bed by Grandpa even though he’s hours away. But here’s the caveot on this one. We have not managed to keep it up consistantly. We usually try to do a video call with Skype (totally free), but I have been thinking we might try this over the phone next time. Just to make it one step simpler.
Making dear freinds out of great great grandmas and grandpas has been more rewarding than we could have thought. And if you do give one of these ideas a try, don’t be afraid to keep it simple. Simple means doable.
Good luck. If you try, I’d love to hear how it goes.
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I love these ideas. My kids always love when I tell them my memories from when they were a baby, what they were like inside of me (each one already had personalities dontcha know) and how they were born and what they did the first moments of their lives. They LOVE it! I’ll have to add more family history stories though because I think that’s great!
I almost had tears!!
I want grandparents like these! acutally my parents are pretty awesome.. but I love to find extra ways to have that connection between grandparents and grandkids. I love when I hear about people whose grandparents live near by and hop into bed with them etc.
anyway I always tell my husband he better be a good grandad!! and here is another way he can ( in like 20 years!! lol)
These are great ideas. My husband and I love geneology and learning more about our ancestors and the roles they play in our own lives. Our kids love hearing them too. The other day my son told me that he missed his great-great-great-great grandfather. He was completely serious about it too. You could tell by his tone and see on his face how bummed he was all of a sudden. It just makes me want to squeeze him! Thank you for sharing with us!
These proclamation posts have been so great. Thanks Cocoa!
Great post. We use Skype to talk to our grandchildren. It’s wonderful for those who live far away.
The bedtime story thing is a great idea! I think I will be asking my father and father-in-law if they can participate. Thanks for the great ideas!
I love the grandpa bonding time. What a wonderful idea! 🙂
That’s a great idea! My parents have always been around my kids but are on a service mission now – my mom would love this chance to ‘be near’ the kids while she’s gone. Thank you!
I love the ideas. I might could use them for my own grandkids. Thank you for sharing.
lovely post..and how fun. before the advent of Skype, and for the older grands, when we gave a particularly nice book, my husband would read it into a cassette recorder for the grands to listen his voice. we ought to restart that activity.
but on a different vein, the activity i loved best was our 5 minute clean. we’d all be in one room, set the timer and clean like mad for 5 minutes and then go to the next room…again, all together. We would do the 3 main rooms in the house (yes it was a small house for 7 people) and then split up the 3 bathrooms and each child would clean their rooms for 10 minutes. then it was over. the house was clean and we had great fun bumping into each other. Oh where did those days go? sniffsniff. togetherness…you can’t beat it.
I think keeping it simple is the real key to doing and continue doing family home evening. I had the deer in the headlights look this week as I pulled into my home around seven after picking up kids from activities. I had made a treat, which was good, but didn’t have a lesson. I have teens so pulled out the Sept. New Era and we talked about Elder Bednar’s article on revelation. It worked…wasn’t the best ever, but it worked. Joni
I like the long distance stories. My kiddos would love it too. THanks!
I am so in love with the five minute family story idea! I sometimes go back a year ago on the blog to see what we were doing. Time to get the whole family in on it. And calling relatives with questions is brilliant.
Thank you for the fantastic ideas:)
Great ideas! We used to do some of this in Family Night when my children were small. Now I am the Grandma in Colorado and my grands are on both coasts. My grandsons read me stories on gmail chat but I couldn’t see the books so I went to my library to see the pictures they were so excited about. Now we all have computers with video chat and the problem is solved. It is so easy to do. Try it!