Our country’s Independence Day will soon be here, so how will you celebrate with your family? We hope to go to a couple of parades this coming week, and we also plan to watch some fireworks displays that we can see from our neighborhood. We have watched the fireworks like this for many years! No driving and no paying for entertainment–my favorite!
Besides the fun though, I also want my children to understand what this holiday is about. I am saddened by the current state of our country, but that does not mean we cannot celebrate what our founding fathers intended our country to be and all the hard work they put into that. For this purpose, awhile ago I was able to obtain this lovely Summer Countdown book by Amy Puetz. Amy has a passion for history, and this book is filled with memory making stories and activities for not only the 4th of July, but also Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Father’s Day. I know that most of these holidays have passed for this year, but you can always use the book for the next year and years to come too! The book is broken up into daily sections with different things for you to read and do. There are even appropriate songs to sing! It makes it really easy to have some fun and engaging things to do with your children to celebrate the summer months and give them the historical significance of the holidays too! I think you will love this book.
Some of the stories included are:
- “Earning the Flag” by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
- “Emily Geiger’s Ride” by Benson John Lossing
- “An Escape from a Prison Ship” by Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
- “John Paul Jones” by Albert Blaisdell
- “Letter to His Son” by Theodore Roosevelt
- “The Only Son of His Mother” by Florence Morse Kingsley
- “The Parshley Celebration” by Sarah Orne Jewett
- “The Prodigal Son” retold by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
And, in case you are interested, Amy Puetz has also put together some other “countdown” books for other holidays. She has Countdown to Thanksgiving, Countdown to Christmas, and Countdown to Easter too! These books are interesting and are also nicely illustrated.
We hope you have a lovely Independence Day, and how about we all set aside a time to pray for our nation on this day too? I have some children that remember to pray for our country every day, but it would be wonderful if we could do it together as a family, and as the Body of Christ.
