Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 15 | 4 Fun Purchases That Have Leveled Up Our Family

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Ep. 15 | 4 Fun Purchases That Have Leveled Up Our Family · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:06
  Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned.
• 0:27
  What's up, guys? Jeff and Jeremy here. Welcome back to 5-Minute Fatherhood. Today is what we like to call a listicle day, meaning we like to go through just three, four, or five quick things, either tips or fun things, etc. And today is four purchases that me and Jeremy collectively, or all of us as a family, have made this year that have blessed our family culture. I'll go first. The first one that we absolutely love is...
• 0:49
  is actually intentionally, too, to try to kind of bring back nostalgia to our family, is a record player. Now, for a few reasons. One, we love listening to music. We kind of love trying to create a culture of music and dance and fun. But there's something about a record player, which I don't know, Jeremy, and maybe it's not that nostalgic to you because it was actually like normal. To me, it's like very much like us going backwards, but in a really fun, unique way to just listen to things. And there's something about...
• 1:15
  tactile music and, and more like where you have to get out the record and put it on the table. That's way different than asking like Alexa to play the song. Right? Like I feel like when we want to have a dance party, we ask Alexa, but we want to kind of have just a fun experience with usually a story of like, Oh, let me tell you about this record or why we love this. Or this reminds me of, we put on the record. There's something about it where our kids love it. Well, the sound of music record is their favorite one. So it's hilarious to see a four-year-old talk about like Julie Andrews and all that stuff. Um, but the kids love it. So that's one I would say, what about you?
• 1:44
  That's awesome. I want to play off of that one because when I was a kid, my dad, when he would put me to bed every night, he would put at least three records on and then just sort of pop them. That's awesome. And they would play throughout the night. Now, we don't have record players in our kids' room, so I'm going to – so number two on the list.
• 2:02
  is a SanDisk sport 8GB MP3 player with LCD screen. What is this thing? This thing's awesome. So this is like a $30 MP3 player that you can buy your kids a subscription to Audible. And then you can, because I tried to figure this out forever, and one of my friends finally rescued me. I was like, I want my kids to be listening to audiobooks, really amazing stories at night, the way I did with my record player.
• 2:26
  But I didn't want to buy them an iPhone when they were five. I couldn't quite figure this out. I bought one of my kids one of those Amazon. What are those called? What was it? A Fire? Some kind of tablet. Oh, yeah, the tablets. Yeah, it was just too expensive. It had advertisements that were kind of going off all the time. So finally, if we figured out the SanDisk Sport 8GB MP3 player, what you can do with this thing is for $30, you can get an Audible account. You have to activate it with a Windows machine. That's the worst part. But after that, all you have to do is drag and drop...
• 2:56
  Exactly. Whatever audio files you want from your Audible account. And all they have is a device that all it can do is play those 10 or 20 audio books that are on there at that time. So we got like the Narnia books on there for our kids. We got all their favorite books, the Magic Treehouse books, all these things. So my daughter, Elise, is obsessed with this thing. She loves to listen to this at night. And so if you guys want to...
• 3:19
  Really have a place where your kids can just be immersed in story. I love the experience of listening to books, and I wanted my kids to have that experience. I actually had that through these records and cassettes and stuff when I was growing up, but it's a lot easier today. But this little device really helped us out.
• 3:35
  What else do you got? That's genius too, because I feel like it's... Parents have to work so hard to not get their kids uber connected, not only because you don't want them to socially, but then also you got... You can't filter every last little thing that's going to get to them when it's an internet connected device. And so yeah, like old school, aka 90s, I remember when the MP3 players were like all the rage,
• 3:57
  Just get them one of those audio files. That's genius. That's a great, that's a genius one. So the next one for me and Jeremy and April, I've seen this one in action is our kid is when we bought our kids scooters. Now we specifically, we have this weird kind of floor plan, which Jeremy knows goes in a big circle. And I'm not saying you have to do this and moms will probably freak out if we tell you this.
• 4:16
  But we essentially bought scooters that are kind of like mark free, meaning like the wheels are kind of rubber and they can kind of be on floors in a nice, soft way. They're not like intense. And so our kids can ride. We let them ride them inside. And because our floor plan is a circle, it's literally treated like a track. We have races. The kids think it's a blast. I made sure to get me an adult scooter. I don't ride that one inside.
• 4:34
  But basically, we got a bunch of wheel toys, whether it's bikes, scooters. I got myself a skateboard. We live on a cul-de-sac. And that has blessed our family culture like crazy because it's almost like a habit now where every night we say, let's go out in the street. Let's go out in the cul-de-sac. Let's ride around. They ride them in the house in the day. Man, it's just way, way, way better. And they care about saying like, oh, let's do that rather than let's watch a movie or let's do that. It's perfect. We love it.
• 4:58
  Yeah, those are awesome. Those little plastic scooters he's talking about. As soon as we walked in to their house, Kinsley and Cannon both grabbed their scooters, and they wanted to show us how they're super coordinated. And they go pretty fast, too, where you got to watch out. They come around hot. Yeah, you got to watch out. They do. I know. But Cannon, he's amazing at that little thing. I know. It's so fun to watch him. So yeah, I love that. Any kind of way to get some energy out while you're inside the house.
• 5:22
  Okay, the last one to purchase that this really list. I've never seen this in another house, I don't think. We probably have at least 30 book holder mini display easels. Okay, so these are like things you'll see in life. At least 30. Yes, that's incredible.
• 5:41
  These are little tiny wire display easels that you might see in a library or you might see at a bookstore. So one of the things that I read once was that—this is in Freakonomics where they said that the most literate kids happen to be not the ones who read the most or were read to the most, but the ones who saw the most books in their house growing up.
• 6:02
  It was a freakonomic thing. They couldn't figure it out. There's a whole chapter about it. It's fascinating. But I was like, but it really got me thinking, and that is I really want my kids to see books. I really want them to be intrigued by, huh, I wonder what's in there. So we do spend a lot of money on books, but instead of just having them in bookshelves where they're all lined up and all you can see is the binding, we actually bought these little wire display easels. And like I said, we have at least 30 of them.
• 6:25
  And so anytime there's a really interesting book, I'll try to find one that's cover really pops and makes you go like, ooh, what world is inside of that book? And then I wanted it to be sort of displayed. And I heard – I haven't been in an Amazon store, but I've heard that the entire store, every single book is face out. Yeah. I don't know if that's true. Is that true? No, yeah, it is. Yeah, it's incredible. I think there's something about that. It's genius.
• 6:45
  Yeah. So why not do that to your house? But of course, a lot of times the problem is that books all fall over. And so we bought a whole bunch of these really super cheap. They're like a dollar or something each, but you can buy a bunch of them. And then you can go look at the 30 books you think are most intriguing to your kids and just have them all facing out using this silly little wire display easel. So those were really, I love them. I love that they are in our house. I love that.
• 7:10
  that our house is a place that you can almost get immersed in books and the books are almost as enticing as the screens. And that's one of the things that really helped us do that. Totally. All right, guys. So that's all we got for today. But what we would love to hear, hit us up on social media, whether it's family teams, five minute fatherhood, and let us know a couple of purchases you guys have made or things that have totally exponentially blessed your family culture.
• 7:32
  Hey guys, one of our favorite places to hang out on is the family team's Instagram. That is where you will find tips, quotes, tricks, and a bunch of other conversational things to help you build your family team on mission. If you're on Instagram and you want to get encouragement as you do this and build your family team, just head over to Instagram and follow us at family teams.