Instilling the word of God unto the hearts of your children is forever an ongoing process. During a conversation a few years ago about children’s spiritual growth, a church leader sarcastically said, “yeah who really does family devotions anyways.” I will admit I didn’t say “we do.” I felt embarrassed and naive that we were doing it. I should’ve spoke up, but no one usually want to listen to the wisdom of a new mom, because what do we really know. But new moms still have excitement, drive, and hopes that contrast the cynical, self-centered, lukewarm view of some empty-nesters. I didn’t need to be told to quit trying Family devotions, but encouraged to keep it up because it will be tough. I needed advice, that only an experienced mature believer can give, on how to wade through those tantrum waters ahead. But that’s not what was offered and I wonder how many other moms feel alone, helpless, exhausted, failures, and confused and all the advice they get is “you were foolish for even trying.” I’ve been blessed with a strong extended family to help guide, but not everyone has that. So after our complete utter disaster of today, I wanted to share what real life Family Bible time looks like at home, in hopes to encourage someone else. We do a couple things right now: •Family Bible Study •Family Quiet Time •Memory Verse Reading Right now, for our Family Bible Study, we have a Bible basket that holds my two Bibles, my devotional, and our children’s picture Bibles. The boys can pick which Bible to read and look at pictures quietly while I get my own reading in. Once I have my own time, I read a chapter aloud out of my Bible and a story from theirs that they have chosen. We end in prayer...at least that’s how Hallmark would show it. Today we took our Bibles on our morning walk to do our Family Bible reading. The boys reading on their own is new to them, but we’re trying to teach them the habit of daily being in the word. So far, the three year old wants nothing of it. He refused to open his Bible and complained. The baby took his short baby time, but while he was quiet, the three year old whined. Then baby was finished and crying to climb on the rock, so my own quiet window was lost. I read my devotional to the sound of complaining children and then read a chapter of Proverbs to them, while they climbed on the rock, repeatedly brushing ants off the baby and taking pebbles from his hands. Then the three year old complained he wanted a snack I fought the urge to scold a plethora of Christian guilt to try to manipulate my child to opening his Bible. It’s so hard to accept that as a parent I have no control over my child’s heart. There’s no magic words or steps to promising a little angel heart, devoted to God and obedience. But even if he was sitting pleasantly, singing hymns, and whispering little child prayers to God, it doesn’t mean a thing. He could just know how to manipulate a situation to look good and get mommy’s approval, and I could get an A+ at raising a little hypocrite. So I look for the silver lining; he’s honest with me. I’m seeing his true heart so I know how to pray. He actually did end up flipping through his Bible on the rock, while I was reading aloud, and he even asked a question about one of the proverbs so he WAS LISTENING. They’re learning it’s important. I’m learning to hold my tongue, to persevere, and that God calls me to instruct them, not to change their heart, I must leave that to Him. I don’t save. I am not the giver of knowledge and understanding. He is. So we’ll do it again tomorrow. Again, I’ll take a deep breath and ignore the attitudes and whining. I’ll try to read a bit myself and share how special our time is. This afternoon will be our family quiet time and they like that, but we’ve been doing it longer. We get out our special blankets and lay on the floor and be still, listening to God, praying, or thinking about him. I try to alternate doing it with and without baby. He needs to learn the habit of sitting still, but he doesn’t get it yet. He’s crawling all over and thinks it’s a wonderful time, so it’s a bit distracting. The thing, is he knows it’s a special time and he IS learning. We did quiet time during baby’s nap yesterday and forgot to put away the blankets. He squealed when he saw them and immediately sat down...and then stood up and sat in a new spot...and then found another new spot. He isn’t quiet, being still lasts maybe 10 seconds, but he wants to do it with us. Very rarely is anything picture perfect, and if it is it lasts just long enough to maybe snap a picture but that’s it. A picture makes a specific time last forever because it stopped that time, but time doesn’t stop and neither does a toddler. Memory verse reading is simply that, my Bible is usually on the table during meals and I read the same verses over and over. I underline the verse and mark each page with some sparkly washi tape to make it easy to find. We all end up learning the verses and little Danny enjoys the routine and repetition. Slowly more verses are added, so at this point we already sometimes don’t get through them all, but Danny knows almost all of them. Danny isn’t a performer and if he’s told to memorize or asked to recite he will dig in his heels and refuse to do anything. The pressure of messing up makes him refuse to try, so we don’t even act like it’s anything more than reading. For a time he wanted to say them with me, but now he refuses. He comments at church if he hears one he knows, and he regularly recites Joshua 1:9 to me the moment I’m showing any frustration. So, I’ll give up having a performing monkey and trust God to do the work. If I stay consistent at reading them, the boys are hearing them as well, and whether they want to memorize them or not, they are. We are just working a little slower, but I don’t know who we’d be racing anyways. These times aren’t perfect or consistent. There’s days where I’m grumpy or seasons where we’ve gotten out of the habit, but just because a habit broke doesn’t mean we can’t pick it back up. I remember in high school my pastor saying, “if you quit reading the Bible because you failed to read the whole thing in a year, so what! Keep going! Don’t you think God would rather have you read it than quit because YOU didn’t meet the timing YOU decided.” I apply the same reasoning to family quiet time. I’m to be faithful, that doesn’t mean perfect. If we’ve gotten off track, praise the Lord for his graciousness in showing me, praise Him for His patience, His mercy, His forgiveness. He knew I’d fail and never expected me not to, that’s why He sent Christ. Praise Him for providing a Savior, for His unconditional love, for His direction and discipline, and get back to where we need to be.
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As baby gets closer to the preschool age we are beginning to get the question about how, when, and where we plan to school. For us, homeschool has always been the plan, and with everyday we get closer to having to make the decision, we feel stronger and stronger about it. However, we want to do what we feel God is asking us to do with each child, so where God takes us is ultimately the deciding factor. As soon as we mention homeschool, a vast amount of opinions, suggestions, and questions come our way. There's more to homeschooling than just schooling at home, with various philosophies, methods, curriculums, etc. Gone are the days when parents think you're some backwoods, jean skirt wearing, unsocialized Jesus freak. People are starting to recognize the appeal of it, and most excitingly, research is beginning to show homeschooling has many advantages too. The people that I've run into that are the most closed minded are teachers, but it's hard for anyone to admit that there are people out there that DIY their profession. I'm sure contractors get plenty annoyed at all the home DIYers. To their credit, there are plenty of really bad home projects, but there are also some amazing DIYers out there too, who have just knocked it out of the park. Homeschool is basically DIY teaching. Just like there are plenty of good and bad certified teachers out there, there are plenty of good and bad, uncertified homeschool moms. You just have to know where you fit and it's okay to know if something isn't your thing. As I've begun having these conversations, observing others already homeschooling, and listening to them, I've quickly realized that if I don't want to be tossed around by the homeschool world, I need to get my priorities set. Homeschoolers love chatting with like kin about their passion, but that passion can quickly get you down a rabbit hole of people pushing their priorities on you. Originally, I planned to do what was already familiar and easy, sticking to things pretty much like school (I was a teacher for pete's sake, why reinvent the wheel?!) But, the more thought I put into why we’re taking this road and what we want schooling to look like, the more my thoughts began to shift on the matter. (Aren't I doing this to give him a different experience than typical school?) As I devote more time pondering the long-term lessons I want my kids to know, the deep rooted WHY behind what we’re doing, I find myself now swinging the complete opposite direction than what I originally expected. I’m learning I’m not fitting in with even the popular homeschool culture, at least not in my area, and I'm finding it may be the other homeschool moms out there that are going to give me the most grief, not the school teachers like I thought. But this challenge is driving me to research and educate myself more, to analyze my choices, my motives, and desires behind them, and not just make decisions on a whim. There are a lot of reasons to homeschool and I've had enough conversations to realize that if I can identify the root reason someone is homeschooling, I can almost guess how our conversation will go. It's funny too, how we can say one thing, yet our actions show something else. I'm always asking myself what am I prioritizing, because what I prioritize is truly what I value, despite what I may tell myself. It is so easy to convince yourself something is important, but when you look at what you prioritize, it exposes your root values. Church is one thing I'm always checking myself on. I say it's important to me, but when I use the excuse of sleeping in, avoiding germs, or spending time with family to skip service, then ultimately what my actions are showing is sleep, health, and family time is really more important than my time with God. Yet it is so easy in life to fool ourselves! We believe our own lies and ignore what our every day actions are showing. I find I'm constantly having to check my heart and motives over homeschool decisions as I ponder the route we want to go. It's easy to say one thing, but get sucked another way because my priorities are off. I see this in my conversations with others. Some people are honestly aware of their priorities in how they homeschool, and then others are completely blind, telling me all about what they value yet their decisions don't seem to align. No two people will agree on everything and that's not the point, it's the blindness that is dangerous and something I want to avoid. It's those moms that know their priorities, that honestly check their heart and motives to God's word in their decision making, that I want to learn under. As I wade through the various suggestions, advice, and beliefs of others I also have to keep checking myself and why I am agreeing or disagreeing. Why I am being pulled toward a curriculum or method, not just weighing the pro's and con's. Looking at my own heart's motives in my response reveals way more about the way we need to go than debating about developmental stages, age appropriateness, or college readiness. So then I keep asking myself: "What am I prioritizing?" "What honestly is the root driving everything?" "What do I want my real root reason for homeschooling to be?" So to give us a firm foundation to stand on as we wade through the many decisions over the next several years, I decided that Danny and I needed to take a hard look at why are we doing this. What do we want? What rabbit trails might we get sucked down? To do this we started with what homeschooling is not to us. I felt this was really important for us, because there is some truth in each one. However, these areas are where I feel a lot of the real pressure from other homeschoolers comes from, and where we can easily get distracted, prioritizing the wrong things. These things aren't wrong in themselves, but we don't want them to be the driving factors behind our decisions. We are not homeschooling to:
Then Danny and I looked into what we wanted out of homeschooling. Some of these things could possibly fit into areas above, which is why we did our NOT list first. Below are the benefits we hope to see. If something drastically interferes with these things we value, then it is a good clue maybe it isn't the best decision for our family. Top Reasons why we are Homeschooling:
Finally, we both came up with a mission statement for our little homeschool. Danny and I both wrote our own and compared, using both to create one for our family. It sounds so nerdy, but I need something solid to fall back on, to remind myself why we have made the decisions we have, and to guide further decisions down the road. Our Mission Statement To train our children with a Biblical foundation in every aspect and subject of their learning, creating independent, lifelong learners, bubbling with curiosity and creativity in God’s magnificent creation and appreciating God’s character in the world they live. To teach in a way that values every learner and their unique, God-given learning styles and interests, developing each child’s strengths and weaknesses to equip them in an eternally focused, God-honoring way that allows them to make sense of their world, grounded on the guidance and direction of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This was so helpful for me to process through and helps me stay grounded. I've already had people surprised Danny doesn't know his letters, numbers, shapes, and counting. He's terrified to potty train and still has a pacifier. But he told me the other day which part of the sky the sun goes night night and which way is the right way to go home from the store, both I've never taught him. He can name all the different construction vehicles, tell you Paul wrote the book of Romans, remember where all his outerwear goes in the mudroom, and make connections between books and stories that I don't even think to make. The thing is, every mom could come up with a similar list of things for their kids, because kids are always learning. I can allow the pressures of society to make me feel inadequate, or just be grateful for the little person God has given me and enjoy the time watching him learn. I can't allow worldly pressure, my own insecurities, pride, laziness, or whatever else to distract me from our main goal. Both Danny and I gave top priority to providing a Christian and biblically infused education for our children. It is not just something that is Christian, but something that is gospel centered to it's very foundational core. We don't want the Bible to be an add on subject, but something woven throughout every aspect of their learning. That right there is what will be the root of our decisions and what will separate us from others. Plenty of people won't even understand the difference between a Christian education versus one that is biblically infused. Even other Christian homeschoolers may value a biblical education but may have a different top priority. Their decisions will be different, their motivations will be different, their priorities will be different, and I have to keep that in mind as I take advice. Ultimately, we need to do what is best for our family and where we believe God is leading us.
With baby boy's language skills rapidly developing, I am beginning to gear up for starting scripture memorization. Kids tend to have this amazing ability to memorize things easily and I don't want to waste those years. While we want to wait to school, we believe you can never start teaching them God's truth too soon. Right now we read Proverbs 8, Psalm 23, and Danny's verse we picked for him (Eph 3:16-21) when we are at the table. Bible time in the morning has become just what we do, something his Daddy did a great job doing over the summer. Baby gets his breakfast and then says "pray" and "Bi" (Bible) always giggling with excitement, waiting to be asked what books he wants to read. He always requests "Ro" and "John" (Romans and John), which is what we've been doing in BSF, and if we still have time we read an additional Psalm and Proverb. He is getting the reference down to his verse, although we're the only ones that understand him, and he loves hearing us read and says "gen," (again) every time we get to the end. I'm learning that even in a church setting, the mention of wanting to do scripture memorization, family scripture reading, morning devotions, or anything like it is found pretty annoying. Even more so out of the older moms about to be empty nesters, I hear 'it just isn't practical,' or 'who really does that,' or 'don't even try you'll just fail.' But here's the thing, in elementary school I had to memorize one verse a week as part of our Bible grade. It was just the norm to have weekly verses along with our spelling words to learn. We did it and the verses could get quite lengthy. Do I remember all of them? No, but I do remember a lot. Now let just think about what this meant at school for scripture memorization. If there's 36 weeks in a school year, after 5 years we would have memorized 180 different verses and that is only doing one verse a week, no passages! That's a lot of verses! I've realized if I continue down the homeschool path for my kids, the responsibility of scripture memorization falls completely on me. There is no school to rely on, and yeah it's extra work for me, but that's not an excuse to not do it. The lesson to learn from the older Debbie Downers, is truly living this out is hard, and I believe it. I'm not the most organized and diligent person, so this will require some serious training for me, but I've got to at least try. I really love the book of Deuteronomy (I know its weird). It spoke so much to me as a new parent and really showed me that I was not to take teaching my children about God and his word lightly. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Deut 6:4-9 If we really take this verse to heart, we should be using every possible moment and opportunity to teach our children about God. It is my job as a parent to teach them, not just throw them in church and let them worry about it. Finding time to teach my kids about God comes down to my priorities. Letters, shapes, numbers really all need to take a back seat, but it is so easy to get lost in the wordly battle for grades and neglect spending the time learning God's word. And then there's the laziness; sometimes I just don't want to do it. Love the Lord your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the Lord your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm; the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea as they were pursuing you, and how the Lord brought lasting ruin on them. It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived at this place, and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth right in the middle of all Israel and swallowed them up with their households, their tents and every living thing that belonged to them. But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the Lord has done. Deut 11:1-7 The passage above hit me so hard. Here the people were being commanded to remember what God had done, his blessings, his power. How often am I having these conversations with my kids about what God has done for me? Not only do they need to hear it, but it's also a sure fast way at snapping me out of any ungratefulness. The thing is, when you study the Bible, you learn the people of Israel failed. They didn't do this stuff and their kids didn't know and obey God like they should. It's been hard for parents from the beginning, but God didn't seem to say that was an excuse. I cringe now feeling the overload of judgement coming my way over this. I can just hear the, "I'm just waiting for her to crash and burn." The thing is, I know I'll fail. I'll fail over and over and over again, but that doesn't mean I don't keep trying every time God gets me back on track. Ever since we were married, I began slowly writing down verses I wanted to memorize or have my kids memorize. After 5 years of slowly picking away at it, I have a spreadsheet of verses for my kids. Unfortunately, I haven't been consistent with it so it isn't even near covering the entire Bible, but it is a great starting point and I keep adding to it as I find more. I'm sure there are plenty of books out there on where to start with kids, what verses to learn and when, but I wanted to do what I felt God was putting on my heart. Right now I have over 145 passages listed and it keeps growing. Will my kids learn all of them? Probably not. I'd love them to, but if I'm being realistic, no they won't. I plan to use this as a guide line for selecting verses, going by age and topic to help me sort which is right for each child. I want my kids memorizing what they need, not that they don't need it all, but sometimes you need to hear a specific truth. The verses are more grouped by age but are no way in order. I don't really feel like there is a right order, just picking and choosing what is best for each kid along the way. I'm bad a memorizing scripture, always wanting to, but never getting around to it, so this list helps me a lot. As I begin teaching my kids it will force me to memorize them too, at least while they can't read. I figured I've already got the list so why not share it. If I can help make this so unachievable task a little easier for someone else, why not do it?! I will continue to add to it as I find more and more through my own study. So here it is. Just click the link and you can view it in google. I organized the verses by the earliest age I wanted to start kids learning the verse, PK (pre-k) being the youngest and MS (middle school) the oldest. I recorded the verse topic or paraphrased what it is, because I'm horrible a references. I also listed any method/materials that exist for each verse to help aid memorization or give further insight on the verse. There are also columns to list a child's name and record which ones they have learned, that way I can print it and keep track, hopefully helping them keep them fresh in their mind.
Right now we're doing the verses I listed in the beginning of this post. Our newest addition is Psalm 56:3-4, which I've added to the songs we sing at bedtime. There's no schedule. He may not say it until he is three, but we're just trying to learn and make it a fun special time. He's hearing God's word daily and that's what is important. Retrieved from chickensandchalkboards.com || posted May 16, 2015 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant. Matthew 21:15-16 One thing I was so excited for about having kids in the house was having the excuse to be a kid again. Children and dogs seem to share the wonderful trait of always finding joy in everything. Kids have such a sense of wonder and curiosity over the simplest things, everything to them is new and exciting, ready to be explored. Their little minds exploding in curiosity and everyday discoveries. They help you learn to love things you once despised and to make things that had become dim now bursting in new life. The busy road outside our house, that I can sometimes so despise, is a favorite of Danny's. He loves watching all the traffic go by. We spend several evenings when he is tired just watching cars, and I find myself at times wanting a car to come because the road has been quiet for so long. Never would I have thought I would be wanting another a car to come down that road. You dont have to teach a baby to want to learn, discover, or imagine. Somewhere along the way we all allow the humdrum of life to overtake us, stilling our dreams, guffawing at our curiosities, and blending us all in like one another. We learn to complain about the dumbest things and quickly our kids pick it up too. Sometimes I welcome the rainy days. I love the pitter-patter sound the rain makes, but grey rainy days normally arent my thing and Im sick of them about this time of the year. Storms are different but that cold drizzle that most Ohioans seem to prefer to snow for whatever dumb reason just irks me. Like everything else, little Danny loves it. He quietly watches the rain patter against the car window and streak past. He loves to look out the window at it is splattering in the garden and grab at the droplets on the window as they slip and slide down. It reminds me of the A.A. Milne poem that my mom and grandma used to say to me as a kid. I've always been the type that when a friend tells me they've grown up, we tend to fall apart. Growing up means you sit around mulling over life with your friends and a glass of wine, and its just not me, at least not for another 20 years hopefully. Im the one that wants to still play tag with the kids on the playground and have stupid crazy dance parties. When we go for a drive I still notice the good trees to climb and the good sledding hills. Just the other day I was scouting out a good place for a swing and was contemplating adding climbing planks on the tree branches so little Danny can one day get to bigger heights, and he's not even crawling yet. Ive thought about figuring out a way to put a switch on the security light over the driveway so we can get the yard extra dark for Ghost in the Graveyard, and Danny and I have dreamed about glamping out the truck for the perfect meteor shower backyard campout. Baby chub is nowhere near needing any of those things yet, but he will get there. For now we spend the day finding baby appropriate discoveries. Last summer I was looking out at our yard, well speckled with golden dandelions and thinking how pretty it was. I remember thinking how wonderful it would be to have a kid tromping through all of them, giddy over the endless number of puffs there were to collect. As adults we hate dandelions, they over take your yard, can somehow manage to matrix the lawn mower, and suddenly stretch super tall with their ugly puffs, planting millions more with the next gust of wind. A kid however, can see their beauty, finding endless amounts of joy in them. I remember their was a lot at the end of my grandmas neighborhood that was overgrown with dandelions and I was jealous of how many there were. I always wanted to get down there when they were puffy and run and spin through the field, kicking up as many puffs as possible as they followed me along in the air. I would pick a bouquet of them to take home, but get so frustrated over how I could never manage to keep them perfect by them time we got back. Id give me mom yellow stamps by rubbing the flowers on her hand, and always wanted a crown out of them. Kids love to give bouquets of dandelions and so many times at school, kids would pluck one up for a teacher, yet too often as adults we look at that gift through adult eyes and forget exactly how precious that gift is in the eyes of the child. It was peak bloom of the dandelions the other day and little Danny was enraptured by them. At first he couldn't understand where the puffs would go when he scrunched them in his sweaty hand but then he learned to fluff them with his finger tips or wave the whole thing in the air. Eventually, all he wanted to do was eat them, which he didn't like, and I preferred not to have to dig them out of his mouth, so I would blow them in his face and he would try to catch them. Even Elmer enjoyed it, jumping and barking, trying to get them and stealing empty stems from Danny. By the end Danny was covered in fluff and I'm still picking it out of the stroller, even found some in the bed this morning, but he loved it and I was so happy to get to experience the joy of dandelions again. It was one of those wonderful afternoons where the sun was casting its warm evening glow across the yard. The chickens were clucking around and the hum of lawn mowers could be heard at every house. Baby Danny was just kicking back in a t-shirt and diaper and we enjoyed a simple dinner of grilled cheese on the deck. We watched the chickens eat up their last bugs and hop into the coop for the night as the tree frogs awoke and began singing in the woods behind. My wish for you little one is to never lose your sense of wonder. People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them.
Mark 10:13-16 |
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