A Kid's Journal to Encourage A Child to Write in a Second Language

We're raising our three Dutch boys bilingually, with the primary aim that they are comfortable speaking English with their British and American family. I am always on the look out for fun, interesting ways to encourage my sons to speak in English, listen to English or read English books. The biggest challenge however, is getting my nine year old to write in English. I was delighted when a great opportunity for him to practice his English penmanship fell into our laps.

I'm a fan of journaling for many reasons, and I believe it is a valuable tool for children as well as adults. The Time Capsule kid's journal turned out to be not only great fun and insightful, but a great way to get my eldest voluntarily writing in English. Without me pushing or nagging my son chose to write in his second language.

Why I Journal Our Decembers

Every year around this time I get ready to start a Christmas journal, more specifically a 'Tis the Season Gadanke journal. I usually get near to the end of November and then think about my Christmas journal, realise I don't have one and get one rushed to me just in time for 1st December.

This year I am prepared! I have this year's on the kitchen counter, ready to go and my eldest asked me yesterday what it was. I told him that I use it to record all the wonderful things we tend to do as a family during December; I write little notes, put photos in and record the details. It's become a tradition, and as my sons get older they'll add to it themselves.

"I've been doing one every year for the last few years. You can look at them later if you like," I told him. His eyes lit up.

"Really? That would be cool!" he said.

My children, as most children do I think, love looking at photos of themselves when they were little(r). And that's the moment when I remembered exactly why I spend time in December capturing both the special and the ordinary moments.

My boys are growing fast - the rolls of baby fat are long gone, the high chair has no place at our Christmas table anymore and whether Sinterklaas exists is now a question on my eldest child's lips. In short, every December we have together is different.

December is evolving as we grow as a family. One day our Decembers will look so different, one day when my children have families of their own. But meanwhile, these are our Decembers to share - and I'm making the most of them, every smile and squeal of joy.

December is a mad month, easily the busiest month of the year. First we have the build up to Sinterklaas arriving in the Netherlands (he gets here this Saturday) and as soon as he heads back to Spain with his helpers our attention turns full on to Christmas. December is a mad month - but also an incredibly wonderful one so capture it.

Every year I create our own advent calendar which comprises 24 envelopes with something sweet and edible and an activity which we then do that day. Because things at school are already hectic enough for my children I tend to go for quiet, calming activities during the week. Think things like a Christmas story by candlelight or simply eating by candlelight, or donating food to a local cause or making a present for a loved one. Other days we go to a Christmas market or fair or bake mince pies or pepernoten. This year a traditional, British pantomime will be on December's list (watch out for a future post on this!).

So, there are lots of moments to capture, lots of fun to record for later years, and lots of photos to take to remind us of precious times. Lot to be thankful and grateful for.

And on top of all that the Gadanke Christmas journals contain writing prompts that make me think about the smells, the sights, the sounds, the feelings of the festive season - and of course the tastes of December! And there are lots of other little bits and pieces which will make the creatives amongst you squeal with joy. Gadanke is also a great place to go for journaling inspiration, including workshops, prompts and ideas to spice up your pages.

Oh how I love December!

How do you capture your December memories? Do you journal at this time of year?

Stop. Pause. Journal. It's Summer Holiday & Expat Dilemma Time.

The summer break is coming up and that means exotic trips, palm trees and cocktails, plane journeys to far off places, lazy days on the beach soaking up the sun - or in our case cramming as much crap as we can get in the boot of the car and then squeezing three kids in the back seat hooked up to a DVD and Nintendo intravenous drip feed and heading off to Germany.

It's always hard to plan a summer break when you are an expat. On the one hand I want to see my friends and family who are back in Britain, on the other hand the world is a big place so heading back to the same town in the same country every year gets old when you have done it year after year. Nearly Irish sums it up beautifully in her post she added to the monthly #ExpatLifeLinky.

Since having children we have tried to combine a summer break with a visit to loved ones back in Blighty. We've been to Cornwall, England for the past three years so we thought we'd try somewhere else this year. It's a surprise for the boys what exactly we'll be doing - but I do know it will be lots of fun. But the new destination means skipping a trip to England. Living a life overseas makes vacation time a little more complicated - there's always a destination dilemma to deal with!

On the other hand, our unchartered destination this year, means I get to fill my "The Great Journey" travel journal with completely new things this summer. I have kept a memento of our holiday using Gadanke's crafted gem for a few years now - but last year I couldn't help but think that I had probably filled in the same details the year before....

But I won't be able to say the same this year! The journals are a great way of capturing the moments that make up a fantastic family vacation: the sights that mesmerise, the smells that overwhelm, the colours that fill your children with wonder, the new tastes they can't get enough of, the giggles you share as a family. There's room for photos and postcards, hiding places for those special museum tickets or train ticket stubs. It becomes a homemade time capsule to look back on with your children as they grow. These Gadanke journals give me my 'me moments' whilst away, my relaxation moments which allow me to be creative.

Keeping a travel journal whilst on holiday has become an obsession a habit I love. (If you love journaling too head over and take a peek at the many Gadanke free workshops for great tips and advice.) It makes me pause and take in the world around me, really soak up my new environment. And that is what a summer holiday is all about - stopping, pausing - wherever you head, whoever you spend it with. Right?

How do you record your summer holiday memories? Do you keep a travel journal? Turn your photos into a photo book? 

A Birthday (and a Giveaway) Fit for a Dutch King

Next week it's the king's birthday, the 27th April to be precise, and he's throwing a huge street party to which you are all invited.

The Dutch king's birthday celebrations certainly beat borrowing chairs from the neighbours to make a huge birthday circle in which to eat soggy crackers and drink coffee. His involve everyone dressing up in orange and hitting the Dutch streets - armed with as much crap from your house as you can physically carry in order to sell it from blankets on the pavements. Huh what? I hear you novices to King's Day cry. Yes really, all truth.

Of course the king himself doesn't take part in the vrijmarkten (although that would be rather amusing - him and the family sitting on a blanket selling the unwanted things from their royal residence and princess Amalia playing the flute and Maxima selling homemade cakes to earn a few cents) but he does throw toilets around. Again, yes, it's true, although in all fairness that was to celebrate his mother's birthday and not his own.

Let's face it King Willem-Alexander has the kind of birthday celebrations that are worth recording for prosperity and I have just the giveaway for him - an "It's My Birthday Journal" lovingly handmade by the award winning Gadanke.

It has room for the king to keep a birthday card from his mother (as in the woman formerly known as Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands) and those precious photos of the common folk taking to the nation's waterways in boats adorned in orange from head to toe.

There are embellishments fit for a king and an annual letter that Queen Maxima or one of his three daughters could write to him. There are writing prompts to help him review the year gone by, and a place to record the plans for the coming year - important whether you're king of the Netherlands or a regular person like you and me.

The journal is colorful, comes with a PDF document so that the number of birthdays you can record is endless, as well as 30 minutes of video tutorials full of inspiration and tips. In short, it's fabulous. And I have one to give away - to entrants worldwide. That's right, no matter where you live on the globe, whether in a palace or a humble abode, you can enter.

And so how do you get your hands on one of these wonderful Gadanke birthday journals? I figured I shouldn't enter my own giveaway - morally and ethically not done and all that - so there are three journals winging their way to me as I type and as it's my middle son's birthday next week we'll be getting to work as soon as it arrives! So you can either go order one or three like me, or you can enter to win one here on this blog!

If you, even if you are King Willem Alexander himself, want to win an It's My Birthday Gadanke journal use Rafflecopter below - there's no special treatment king or no king and you can enter until the very end of the Dutch king's birthday.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Leave a King's Day or birthday related comment below for extra entries in the giveaway - I want to hear what you love about King's Day, your experience with the dreaded Dutch birthday circle or what you last took in as a traktatie. If it's birthday related, share it!

Good luck!

Expat Life: Loving and Leaving Where You Live

I have just finished reading Global Mama by Melissa Dalton-Bradford (you can find a review here) and all the way through the book I was struck by the sense of 'home'; her family's ability to set down roots wherever they ended up living. They didn't just live physically in new countries, new places, new houses; they lived with their heart and soul and I had the feeling that every place they left meant leaving a little part of themselves there. Truly global living.

Reading Dalton-Bradford's account of living in Norway and the cultural differences they experienced when the family made a move to Paris made me think about my own sense of home.

I take for granted now that I live in the Netherlands, that I live in a Dutch house, in a Dutch street surrounded by locals. But what does that actually mean? It's the little things around us that make somewhere unique to live. It's the secret corners, the special items of furniture or memorabilia that travel with us, it's the normality of our days in a place. It's the waves from neighbours, the familiar faces scraping ice from the cars parked in the street in winter.

As each day passes in a house, in a town, in a country we take everything around us more and more for granted. Nothing seems particularly special anymore because we see, touch or pass it every day. Only by leaving a place do we see it's true place in our heart. Only by moving on do we appreciate all the little things that make a place special, make a place our home. And when you are not constantly on the move it is easy to forget all that.

Reading Global Mom reminded me that I was busy with a Love Where We Live journal at one point but never finished capturing the place I call home. A journal about where you live is never really finished of course - things change, you redecorate, you renew, you refresh rooms - and more importantly every day you live in a home you make new memories. But I was busy capturing the essence of the place I call home. I was busy with photos of the room we gather to eat, where we scrub our teeth, where the children play.

What makes a home a real home though is not the wallpaper, the curtains you've meticulously chosen to match the sofa, nor the well thought out shade of the woodwork's paint, but the people you share your home with.

Home is made special by the things you do together - the Friday night rituals, the lazy Sunday morning breakfasts, the ordinariness of the morning rush out of the front door. What do festive holidays look like in your home? How would all that change if you lived somewhere else? Expat life is certainly about change - from the minor to the major, from the little day to day things to life changing events. And in all that our home is the foundation, it holds things that are familiar and dear to us. It holds things that capture our memories, whether we realise it or not.

There are things scattered around my Dutch home that I brought with me from England and every time they catch my eye I am cast back to a previous life, even if for only a brief moment.

There are even special memories in the choosing of a house - the memories of picking the house that we currently live in have emotions intrinsically entwined around them. We bought a home for our future. We bought a place we could make our own, put our stamp on. Then, back in 2002, there were two of us. Now there are five of us. We have grown our family in this house. As my Love Where We Live journal reminds me the house I live in, the place I call home is special because:

"We are growing into beautiful people here."

Each day we are growing as a family, and this home is the place where my three sons have grown from babies into toddlers and are growing into school-going boys. It's their base, the place they feel safe and secure. And whilst I was reading Global Mom, it became clear to me that this house we live in is a shell for our family, for our lives, but what goes on inside will be the same wherever we should lay down roots, whichever house, street, town or country we should live in. We will take something of this place with us when we eventually move, not the physical stuff, but the emotional and cultural parts of life here in the Netherlands.

Moving away from this Dutch street, this town, or even this country wouldn't take away the memories, the love that has encased us in our home over the last twelve years, the people we have become living our Dutch life.

Imagine tomorrow having to leave the place you currently call home -  what little part of you would you leave behind? What would you take with you from the life you have lead there to your new home?

It strikes me that the furniture would all be replaceable, there'd be no tears shed about leaving the carpets we spent time deliberating over behind, but the moments we have spent getting on with life in our home would be irreplaceable, unique. These moments are currently the daily occurrences that seem so average, so ordinary and uninteresting -  the day to day that hardly seems worth noting in a beautiful journal. But I am off to do just that - because I know one day I will realise the value of all these family moments that make up day to day life in our average Dutch home in a Dutch street, in the middle of the Netherlands. I will come to realise that we have lived in this house with our hearts and our souls. And I will also realise that we will leave a little of ourselves in this home when we leave it.