I started writing character stories when my children were little. We had just finished a day camp called Growing Up on God's Farm, and one of the moms had dressed up as a farmer. Every day she talked about her farm chores and tied it into character traits like diligence and responsibility. The kids loved it, and for the grand finale we took the kids on a field trip to an old fashioned farm community where they could use a water pump, make butter, ride in a wagon, and watch a blacksmith make shoe horses.
Because I loved reading the Little House series to my children, I wrote them like that with each story being about a particular character trait. My dad had grown up on a 110 acre farm in Pennsylvania, and I spent a year there when I was in second grade. So it wasn't too hard coming up with situations that matched the list of character traits that I was planning to use.
In 2020 I pretty much rewrote these stories from the angle of three children similar ages to my older sister, brother and me when we first lived with our grandparents, spending a month of their summer vacation on their grandparent's farm. It was a lot of fun weaving character building and farm life together. These character stories are a great way for parents to instill into their children valuable character traits.
Each story ends with what I call a Character Focus where the children learn what that character trait means and see it highlighted again in the story. After that I wrote three or four questions for the family talk about the story and their own experiences. Every story also has a family activity that sometimes matches the story, and often it's a recipe. And many of those recipes are from this blog!
Last summer I started working with Amazon Publishing to help publish these stories. They assigned a project manager and editorial team to edit these stories. I chose at the beginning to be a part of the editorial process, and that has been a very rewarding experience. My project manager has answered all my questions and helped me navigate this process. On May 15 the Children's Country Character Stories were published on Amazon, and I hope that you will check them out!
