With our first full week back coming to an end, I feel really good about our plan moving forward and the content we have prepared to come out! Looking back on this week, our content feels relevant and cohesive across all platforms, which was a big goal of ours. We want each piece of content we put out to be unique, but to work together to seamlessly continue our journey of growth, learning, & education. We are both so excited for the content we have prepared for the next few weeks ahead!

We started off the week talking about how we can encourage our children to think critically about the world around them. Asking only questions with right or wrong answers will not stimulate the brain into digging deeper into the social issues we experience daily. We want our kids to be asking questions that have multiple answers and points of view, and more importantly, we want to be asking them those questions as well. Check out the A is for Ask Questions webpage which supplements that idea from our book, or click the photo below to read our recent Instagram post on this topic.

When you’re ready to sit down with your child and check out their critical thinking skills, here is a fun worksheet we’ve put together that can be done independently, or together as a family! We do encourage, however, that if you are doing it as a family, to let the children answer first so that they don’t mimic your answers!

Also From this Week:

Our current event of the week was a heavy one! We opened a discussion about the Indigenous residential schools across North America, where hundreds of bodies of Indigenous children and adolescents have been found. Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland has ordered a federal probe in the United States to continue searching the 350+ schools here, at least four of which are still operational today. These schools were used to force assimilation of Indigenous people into Christian culture, where they were forbidden from speaking their Native language, stripped of their culture, and treated inhumanely. Violence and abuse were a daily part of these children’s lives, and although the knowledge of these schools and their heinous actions is not new, it is just now becoming a more mainstream topic of discussion, despite occurring for decades.

This will not be a quick or easy process as those involved work to dig deeper into what happened to all of these children, bring light to crimes and injustices, and work to bring those responsible to justice. But more importantly, this will continue to be a topic of great grief and heartbreak for Indigenous people around North America. While we admit that we do not currently know of many ways to help as Non-Indigenous people, we will continue to do our research and bring any options we find to our readers/followers.

However, we do know that giving Indigenous people the space to grieve, be angry, and to seek justice however they feel helps them is most important right now. We can be listeners and supporters, even if we do not have any direct actions to take. We also encourage people to donate what they can to Indigenous foundations in order to support them financially at this time.

Here are some great Indigenous foundations, although there are many more!

We’ve also started a new series highlighting women who inspire us and we think you should know about too! This week we highlighted India Walton, a mayoral candidate in Buffalo, NY who is absolutely rocking her platform! Visit her website here, our webpage highlighting her, or click below to see our Instagram post!