Character Program

I have been using a new program, Character First.  I thought I would share it as I am really happy with this program.  I have not been asked to do this review, this is just what my family is doing using this program.  I find I do better using a program as a spine for our schooling and then I add to it as I find things.   What I like about this program is that it includes many different activities to help emphasize the Character trait.  The notebook comes with animal stories, people stories, art projects, science projects, and plus more ideas.  You can use them all or just pick and chose like I do.

So far the kids and I have completed 2 Character traits.

The first trait we covered was responsibility and one of the projects was to make a responsibly poster using the kids hand prints to write down their home responsibilities.  We have this posted in the hallway and the kids refer to it daily. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the many activities we did to demonstrate responsibility as I was still learning the program and figuring things out

The next Character trait we did was Patience.  I like the poster  idea so much we recreated it and again have it hanging in the hallway.  I need to move these to the kids room but I like to have the kids to refer to it was it is needed in our home:)

Never one to just follow a program 100% I did tweak them a bit with other things I found on the web.  Such as reading "The Book of Virtues" by William Bennet and completing worksheets on the stories relating to each trait.  We have watch various YouTube videos relating to each trait...You tube is great for finding silly songs or skits that the kids enjoy.

I found this fun clip and thought we could replicate it at home and discuss patience.  We used star burst candies as our treats.

Kids had to sit for 10 minutes and not touch their candies, after the ten minutes we talked about how hard it was to be patient.

Then the kids got to eat their candies plus an extra one as a reward for being patient.

One of the science experiments for the program was to create stalacites and stalagmites.  Since it takes several days the kids had to wait to see the results. oops forgot to get a picture of the end result:(

We are having fun with this program and I think it is helping the children understand the concepts of Character traits---although reminders are needed every once in a while:)!