Summary: Episode Summary<br> In this Q&A episode, I answer Stephanie’s questions about when to focus on teaching kids about America and being American. Stephanie asks:<br> When, besides holidays, do you find time to teach your kids about being American?<br> I have outlined 5 techniques that we use in our family.<br> Method 1: Everyday’s a Holiday<br> A holiday is a time that we take to remember, commemorate or celebrate some aspect of our collective heritage, perhaps a historical event, a person or group or an an ideal. What goes into the observation itself varies from holiday to holiday, but may involve such things as eating certain foods, re-telling stories, special prayers, playing games, watching seasonal TV shows or movies, dressing up, decorating, music, singing and dancing. The list goes on and there are many variations from state to state, and family to family.<br> In the case of the bigger national holidays, the observation is so significant that a whole day is given to it! As expats we do not always have the option to celebrate on the actual day of the holiday, but many of us will go to great lengths to recreate a traditional Thanksgiving or 4th of July event on the weekends around these holidays. <br> Not everything has to be a big fuss though. We can take that same spirit to create smaller observances. And this technique it is not just for official holidays, but for any cultural reference we may choose to highlight. I have outlined a little example to show how we do it. <br> April is the beginning of baseball season. So choose a time a focus on this with your kids . . . say “Opening Day” of baseball season.<br> Now we have a theme for the day and we can integrate little things into our daily activities. Using our kids’ ages as a guide, we pick a few activities or reference points to weave into the daily routine. For example, we could have hot dogs for dinner, make homemade cracker jacks for snack. Teach the kids to sing “Take me out to the ball game” while your are cooking, or just have it playing in the background. I am no athlete, but some might choose go out to play catch, or set up rocks to “run the bases.” Amazon has a ton of baseball related kids books for Kindle so it easy to select one that the kids find interesting and appropriate to their reading level. If it is screen time, we might watch the “Bad News Bears” or since mine are older, “A League of Their Own.” Jacob might prefer to play a baseball themed video game. <br> Throughout the day, I try to sprinkle the conversation with themed vocabulary and idioms. If Emma brings home a good grade or piece of work from school, instead of saying “great job” I say “You really hit it out of the park.” or if she is being snarky I might use a “strike” count for warnings, and explain where that comes from.<br> Theming a day, is really quick and easy, it just requires a little bit of attention and a few minutes of preparation to start weaving your theme into the activities that your family is already doing.<br> 2. Follow your child’s lead<br> A really easy way to find the time to inject a little Americana into your kid’s daily routine is by using their natural curiosity and interests. So what do they enjoy? Emma loves to reading and writing poems, so I introduced her to Shel Silverstein. Jacob enjoys doing puzzles, so we got jigsaws with a map of Texas and a LEGO model of the white house. Books, movies and TV shows that highlight American culture are like a spoonful of sugar when teaching kids about history and culture. Sometimes we watch the oldies but goodies, like Little House on the Prairie. Jacob and I watched the whole John Adams miniseries together, Emma and I watched Akila and the Bee where she learned about the American phenomenon of the National Spelling Bee. Sports fans may enjoy watching games, playing them or both, and even the non-sporty among us can enjoy rooting for the home team. <br>
