One of my favorite things to do is interview my kids. For as long as I can remember, it has been a birthday tradition around our house. (Click here and here to see posts about their interviews.)
My husband video tapes and I write down all of their answers in a notebook. Someday I plan to splice together all of the footage and I will be able to see my kids grow up right before my very eyes. Unfortunately, I have not done a good job of keeping all of these things in an easy to find and organized system, but someday I will! And then we will have the best video and the best scrapbook on the planet.
I don't reserve interviews only for birthdays, you see. I find any excuse to sit my kids down and ask them some questions. I just love getting that little glimpse of who they are and what they like at any given time. When all the stars align, I even make a scrapbook page with the information. When that happens, I'm always so proud of myself since I have a hard time putting info I collect into finished projects! But I digress...
As the kids have gotten older, they are less excited about answering my silly questions and they are even less excited about writing out their answers.
One thing they do love, however, is everything COMPUTER! So, this is where my genius idea came in...
Can you see where I am going with this one? I opened up a free surveymonkey.com account and typed in all of my questions, set up my survey, and then sat my kids in front of the computer and let them go to town. Of course my 12 and a half year old answered every question 'I don't know this quiz.', the first time around, (I have no idea what that means, by the way. Perhaps it is a 12 year old's attempt at cheeky humor?) but once I set him straight he co-operated and answered them all.
There are some limitations to the free account at Surveymonkey.com. The most limiting one is that you can only make ten-question surveys. My cheapskate solution? Create another ten-question survey. That's better for the short attention span of a teen or pre-teen anyway, right?
If you would like to see an example of the first survey I created, click the link below. I think I got the questions from a BigPictureClasses.com class I took at one time or perhaps it was an old Simple Scrapbooks special issue.
Let me know what you think! Do you have any ideas to share on getting precious information out of your kids? Or other difficult people? I have yet to get anyone in my extended family to fill out one of my questionaires.
Maybe it's time for me to try Surveymonkey on them!!!
This is a great idea! I've used surveymonkey.com in the past and it's a really cool service. How fun that you turned the tables and had the kids add the answers. I love to interview my nephews but they cooperated much better when they were little. Not so much now as pre-teens. Unless it's video game, star wars or lego related, they don't really want to participate...
Posted by: Tammy D | April 11, 2011 at 17:24
Thanks, Tammy. Your nephews sound JUST like my three boys.
Posted by: Nihao, Cupcake! by Margie | April 11, 2011 at 17:45
This is such a fab idea! I might have to 'lift' it for when Adam is a little bit older. Thanks for sharing :)
Posted by: Rachel B | April 12, 2011 at 13:11
This is a very nice idea. I think the surveys are a fun way to get children to participate in activities that for them are boring. It's quite hard to keep them interested in something, but if its fun for them then I think they will like it.
Posted by: Clark Adams | June 08, 2011 at 10:19