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We like to have a ministry for teenagers at our home and we call it Open Mic.  Once a month we open our home to whoever wants to come and listen to some good Christian music.  Sometimes we get a bunch of teens to get up there and sing, sometimes they just sit and listen.   I  amazed at the talented youth that we have.  I would NEVER get up there and do that, thank goodness my children have Daddy’s musical gene:)  You can click here to view my daughters 16th birthday party and see how we typically held them in our basement.

Now that it is warmer out, we like to hold these outdoors.  But how can you set up a band on your grass?  With free pallets.  We went and made endless trips to our local stores and got pine pallets.  We then screwed ply wood to the top of it.  Wallah!!! We have a stage.

Here my son is doing his sound checks.  He typically plays Manic Drive, Thousand Foot Crutch, Switchfoot, Hawk Nelson, Hillsong United, Plumb,  and Kutless.  I am sure there are more, those are just ones that stuck out in my head:)

Here Lauren and Collin are playing Holy is our King.  They do an amazing version of this song.  

Sometimes we just sit around the fire and sing.  It doesn’t matter, we just try and actively include the teenagers, no matter who they are or where they come from.

Music is such a powerful influence in our lives, especially in teenagers. It can affect our moods, our actions, and our brains.   If we can show them that there is an alternative that sounds like the same type of music that they listen to but with a positive message, then we have done a good job.

Now what is a party without snacks?  We always provide yummy snacks for open mic. Sometimes it is a Mexican bar, sometimes hot dogs, and sometimes snacks.  This time we made some rice krispy treats with the help of little brother Jentzen.  Since we had a bomb fire we did Smores with cookies and graham crackers,  double chocolate crumble and brownie and fruit skewers.

It is much easier to get all of the foods done, if you enlist with some of the teenage help:) Thanks Molly and Lauren for helping make these.  Afterwards they were great to just throw the sticks into the fire.  I will definitely be making these again, they were very tasty like chocolate covered strawberries.

 

 

 

 

 

This is my daughter’s last  year of school, I wanted to make sure that I covered everything that I “think” she should know.

For her writing I have come up with some copywork and some journaling for her to do each week. I purchased a college ruled composition notebook.  It has 100 pages so I had to come up with a way to split it up for her to do something each of the 40 weeks of school.

The first part of the book has her penmanship lessons.  You can download it here for FREE. It includes lesson for 40 weeks.  I generally gave her 7-9 lines to copy in cursive.  I will have her copy the verse or quote 3 or 4 times depending upon how long each verse is.

After you print off your stack of quotes, by the way these are all perfect bible verse, famous quotes, encouraging statements for a young person to memorize as they are copying, you are going to have to cut them apart to fit in your book.  I pasted them on the opposite page that she is to write on.  I got this idea from Donna Young  The fonts are sized to fit perfectly on the lines, this way my daughter will know exactly how big to  make each letter.

Okay, that took 40 pages, I figured I would have her write on Monday.  Then on Tuesday  and Wednesday each week, I had her do journaling.  I found some great writing prompts that really challenge our young adults to think about things and then write them out.  You can download them here for FREE.

 

I put each weeks lesson on two pages facing each other, that way I only used 40 more pages of the book.  I originally started by using Scotch tape to put these down, then later realized that a glue stick works much better.

Then for the last 20 pages I split them up in half and gave her 2 words of the top 100 commonly misspelled words.  I figured on Thursday she could copy these words ten times each.   Of course there are 100 words and only 80 will get used if you split them up, so we added a few more in on some weeks.  You can download my list here.

Now I feel like my daughter will get sufficient practice in penmanship this year.

Want to know what I did for my pre-teen son?  Click here for his copywork

Here is what we did for our 1st or 2nd grade girls copywork and journaling