Your Family Constituion- A Review & Giveaway

Dominique Book Review family constitution, Family values, Scott Gale

Your Family Constitution: A Modern Approach to Family Values and Household Structure

This past month I have been focusing a lot on family renewal and building up a better relationship with both my spouse and kids.

Early July I was privillaged to receive a copy of Your Family Constitution by Scot Gale. I was introduced to this book by Vered of Momgrind.

Scott’s book was an eye opener for me as it taugh me how to create a Family Constitution which is unique and best suited for the needs of my family.

In this modern world that we live in we are very easily sidetracked by the attraction of material wants and personal satisfaction to spend enough attention and focus on the family.

Our personal values may not be in the best interest of or family and could be the source of conflict in our relationships with one another.

Scott talked about his Black Sunday whereby everything when haywire for him after getting into a huge arguement with his wife. While walking all the way back home from the beach it gave him the time needed to think about where his family was heading and how best to remedy this breakdown in communication.
Even though the boys are still relatively young I feel that it is about time that I start teaching them about our family values and teaching them about rules and consequences for their actions. I’m sure that fellow parents of young kids know the frustrations in getting them to understand the need of following instructions and letting them develop at their own pace.

Kids learn best when they are given guidelines and boundaries. With a set of rules and guidelines coupled with rewards and treats we can slowly shape them into well mannered individuals who at the same time are matured enough to make and stand by their own judgements.

I started a reward chart with Ryan earlier on this year which he has completed. I think that it is now time to work on a new reward/motivational chart for him and do up one for Ryan also. Besides the kids we as parents too should have a reward chart which could be prominently displayed so that the kids could see how that we too are working hard for our own rewards and model the behaviours that we hope to see cultivated in them.

Reading Your Family Constitution has given me a better understanding on what I would like to incalculate in the upbringing of my kids. It has sparked off lots of ideas on how I can revise our family motto and vision and incorporate the kids suggestions into making our own family constitution.

Scott Gale has very generously agreed to let me give away a copy of his book to one of the lucky readers here at Dominique’s Desk.

Giveaway Regulations

To enter this giveaway you would have to do the following:

Go to Scott’s site and come back here leaving a comment in this post telling me why you think your should be the winner of this book.
Subscribe to Dominique’s Desk via RSS or Sign up for our newsletter. ( If you are an existing RSS/newsletter reader you need not resubscribe. Just mention in the comments below)

For Extra Entries you can do the following.

Twitter about this giveaway to @dominiquegoh
Add our Button to your blogroll and leave me your site link

Entries must follow the rules or they will not be deems eligible for the prize.

This contest ends on Sunday September 27, 2009

Good Luck

September 1, 2009

Educating Esme- A book Review

Dominique Book Review Classroom management, Educators, Teacher

Educating Esme-Diary of A Teacher’s First Year by Esme Raji Codell

I was very privileged to be invited to be on Esme’s Blog Tour which starts in September.I received a copy of her book last month and it was a really refreshing read. It is very seldom that I pick up a book relating to being a teacher and can get through reading it at one siting.

Educating Esme is an open diary about Esme’s encounter in the classroom as a Beginning teacher. It brought back memories of myself being a Beginning teacher nearly 10 years ago. The experiences and challenges I experienced were not that similar but I could strongly relate to the strong oppression by the management a.k.a Head Chief .

I loved reading about her quirky responses and how she challenges authority. In one of the entries that she wrote in her Diary it mentioned that her class was busy doing group work on the floor. The principal came in and announced to her that she was doing a bad job of classroom management as it look like chaos. She answered that “No” and that her class was perfectly under control and put up her hand to call the kids to attend. Almost immediately all the pupils stood up and put up their hands too and the classroom fell to an eerie silence.

Esme bares it all and tells how teaching is it through her eye. Her diary if filled with her genuine feelings how how she handles all the different challenges hurled at her during classroom teaching. She strives very hard to make educating and learning a fun and meaningful experience for all the students in her class. Her rich knowledge of literature can be seen the class library, classroom decoration and school activities which is vividly described in her book.

She has lots of practical and interesting tips which I can adapt into my own classroom to enrich the learning experience of my kids.

I strongly recommend that you pick up a copy of Educating Esme I really enjoyed reading it and I am sure that you will too 🙂