Everybody is abuzz about tiny houses, and one of my students, Will Eklund, is building a tiny house this summer! 

He laid out building plans for 4 months using a CAD program where he learned all about building codes and drafting.  After much research about building permits and restrictions for tiny houses, he decided to build a Tumbleweed tiny house because it’s built on a trailer and doesn’t require cumbersome permits.  After all, it’s a moving house and not a stationary building.  The Tumbleweed tiny houses meet recreational vehicle (RV) requirements and they offer building plans.

Will spent about 3 months putting together his budget.  Using the materials lists that came with the plans, he meticulously organized all of the materials he would need for this project.  This was a huge learning curve for Will because he had no experience doing any construction or building of any kind. He is a math kid who loves problem solving and engineering. The idea of building a tiny house after learning how to make building plans was just the natural progression.  He was clueless about the many acronyms and slang used in the building industry.  Who knew that “RO” meant rough opening?

Will and I got educated by going to San Lorenzo Lumber, Riverside Lighting, and other stores to see what the many materials on the list looked like.  Mario, George, and Craig at San Lorenzo Lumber showed us what we needed and educated us. Brian at Riverside Lighting showed us all of our options for our electrical and propane materials.  Seeing the building materials helped Will understand how it was going to come together.  We also watched a 6-hour “how to” video on building tiny houses.  Will ordered all of the materials 2 weeks ago, and with each step he was more and more psyched!

Finally, Will received a custom-built trailer made just for the Tumbleweed tiny house last week.  He recruited several friends to help him install the floor insulation and subfloor.  We recruited my good friend Cliff Bixler to mentor Will.  They plan to frame the tiny house this week.  I’m secretly really envious of Will because this has been MY DREAM forever! 

Stay tuned to see Will build his tiny house!

So many kids are graduating from high school, and many are heading off to college, without basic life skills.  Rather than blame the schools, set up a plan to give your kids life skills this summer. You can teach them yourself or collaborate with other families to combine resources and talent. 

Here are 6 easy tips to get your kids on board to learn these life skills now, so they’ll survive in the world without you when they become adults.

#1: Banking
Open a savings account for your child today.  Have them deposit money earned doing chores or odd jobs.  Give them the opportunity to learn how to save money and watch their little nest egg grow.  When bank statements arrive, show them how to read them and encourage the kids to save birthday and holiday cash in their own bank accounts.  For tweens and teens, set up a checking account with a debit card so they can learn to manage their expenses.  Give them funds for clothes and school supplies so they learn how to shop for deals and make smart purchases. 

#2:  Cooking
Have your child prepare one meal for the family each week.  You can start them as young as 5 years old, and they’ll love it.  Show them how to search for recipes online and prepare a grocery list of ingredients they’ll need for their meal.  Start with simple meals like roast chicken, baked potato, and carrot sticks.  Then help them select an easy recipe for one of their favorite meals.  Even if they make the same meal each week, they’ll be proud of themselves for having the wherewithal to serve dinner to the entire family. 

#3:  Cleaning
Even if you have a fulltime housekeeper, make your children clean their own rooms.  Learning how to dust, vacuum, and change sheets is something that everyone will need to do.  Besides, they’ll appreciate a clean house and actually notice the difference when they start cleaning on their own.  Create a schedule for weekly cleaning to teach them the discipline of doing regular chores.

#4:  Sewing
When high schools stopped offering home economics classes a few decades ago, we created a generation of young people who can’t sew buttons, fix zippers, or hem pants.  I’ve seen kids duct tape hemlines rather than sew them.  Seriously.  Learning how to thread a sewing machine, cut patterns, and follow sewing instructions is empowering.  Even if they might not be the next Vera Wang, just knowing how to bring in or hem pants is a skill they’ll be able to use forever.

#5:  Building
I remember when my friend called me frantically looking for a plumber because her surgeon husband tried to fix a leaking toilet and water was flooding her bathroom.  Where does one learn how to fix toilets?  Give your child the opportunity to be handy.  How?  Have your child intern or work with a building contractor one summer.  They’ll learn all about electrical wiring, plumbing, and framing, and they’ll learn how to use power tools.  Teens could build tiny houses where they learn all the skills to build a house but on a very small scale.  I’ll blog about my 17-year old student who just started building a tiny house last week. 

For younger kids, I’ve written curriculum for How Things Work that Merit Academy 4^th graders took for one year. They took apart TV sets, microwaves, sewing machines, computers, and more.  By the end of the year they were curious about how everything works!

#6:  Food
Have your kids start a veggie garden this summer.  Buy plants in 4” pots and transplant them into larger pots or a garden bed.  Teach them about the nutrients that plants need and have them weed and water their gardens every day.  As they grow their own veggies, celebrate by having salad parties.  Even picky eaters try veggies that they grow themselves.  Order fruit trees now and plant them in the fall.  Harvesting fresh fruit is a glorious experience.

Teaching your children life skills can be fun.  Lay out your long-term plans to make sure they all have the opportunity to be self-sufficient and competent. This may be one of the most important things you do in raising your children. 

Here’s a brilliant solution to clean water collection; Requires no electricity – just gravity!

In places around the world where water is scarce, people can build a Warka water tower that produces 26 gallons of water per day. Yup!  Clean water you can drink. 

The bamboo, hemp and mesh structure can be constructed in 10 days by 10 people for only $1000. 

It uses a basic fog-harvesting technique: gravity, condensation, and evaporation, and doesn’t require electricity or other power. Hmm. 

Looks one of my students who is looking to do ProjectMERIT may take this on!

Learn more about the Warka Water organization.

Germany joins France in banning fracking, a process that involves blasting chemicals and water into rocks to release trapped gas. 

So where are we on fracking? Oil companies are drilling thousands of wells all over America.  There are more than 35,000 wells that are being fracked (hydraulically fractured) today, and since the 1940s, there have been over 2 million wells that have been fracked.

It’s time to stop oil companies, and politicians bought out by them, from poisoning our drinking water with known carcinogens!

I hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July!

I’m glad to be an American, even with all of our country’s imperfections and weirdness!

Quite the opposite of America’s helicopter parenting, psychologist Angela Duckworth argues that a combination of passion and perseverance is the key predictor of success.  In her New York Times best-selling book, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” she suggests that kids do one “hard thing” each summer.  This, of course, is just another way of saying “practice makes perfect” and “if you don’t shoot, you don’t score”.

Kids today – more than ever – need to put down their phones and games, and do something real to make the world a better place.  While this might sound daunting, it is exactly what they need so they become an active part of their communities.

By working hard at something – anything – they get the sense that they are contributing in a meaningful way. This engagement keeps them out of trouble and sharpens their minds.

I wrote the book, “Beat the College Admissions Game: Do a Project!” to help kids start their very own projects like Duckworth recommends above.

Give each of your children the opportunity to expand their minds by doing a project this summer.  Besides, it’ll also help them get into college, and earn scholarship dollars! 

Eighty two years ago, my Tatsui grandparents married here in the US.  Their uncles arranged the marriage, a common practice back then, and their marriage was one of the most successful I’ve seen. 

Maybe it was because they made a commitment to one another and worked through any difficulties they encountered.  Divorce was never an option.

They loved and respected one another – and it showed in their daily communication and the way they kept the family together. They survived incarceration for 3 years during WWII when Japanese Americans were interned. 

As soon as they returned from Manzanar after the war, my grandfather worked as a gardener and my grandmother ran a business of housing Japanese immigrants.  They worked hard and saved money to buy the Rose Hotel and apartment buildings in Santa Monica. 

My grandfather was like a father to me and I enjoyed discussing his legacy at our family reunion last weekend. Although both of my grandparents have passed away, their memories will live on in our family.

The family reunion lasted for 2 days, so it’s only fitting that I blog about it twice.

We had activities for everyone!  The treasure hunt and the Boardwalk were the highlight for the kids, while the adults enjoyed Rob’s cooking and telling stories for the oral histories. 

It’s always fun to get together with the family!

I just hosted another Tatsui Family Reunion last weekend. 

As the elders get older, I feel compelled to create opportunities to reunite all of the many family members. 

By using programs such as Family Tree Maker to enter data about each aunt, uncle, cousin, and extended family member, we keep finding new connections. 

We took individual oral histories that we place in Family Tree Maker, and then we had a group oral history video session where we told stories that we may have heard from our grandparents and hashed out as many details as we could while the camera was rolling. 

Even though we may not have all of the answers to our many questions, documenting what we do know and remember will be vital to future generations.  In the process of gathering info and playing games, we all got to know one another better – and we created new memories, and stories.

I look forward to getting together with my family every year. 

I’m really excited that Merit Academy has expanded to include international students!

Our one-on-one classes offer an ideal academic environment for each student, which is especially important for international students, who often end up at the back of a typical classroom.

We are currently looking to place students for the Fall.  By sharing a home with a student, American families can help reinforce English language acquisition and integration into American culture, with the added benefit of learning about the culture of the student!

Merit provides a $1,200 per month stipend to cover expenses throughout the school year.  If you’re interested in hosting an international student this Fall, please contact me at 831.462.5655.