The Heart of Home Education

I have been memorizing Deuteronomy 6. There are many parts of this passage that explain what the heart of home education should be about. For example, God’s people were given his commandments that they would do them,

“That you may fear the Lord our God, you and our son and our son’s son” (v. 2).

Educating our children at home certainly has academic benefits. But the driving force of educating our kids at home is the vision given in this passage: generational faithfulness.

We are looking forward to an encouraging day at the NCHE Conference. I hope to be able to post some highlights.

NCHE Annual Conference

We just signed up online for the annual conference of the North Carolinians for Home Education! We love going to this every year and have made it a priority. We are encouraged by all the speakers, sessions, and talking with other home educators. We always meet new friends and run in to old ones that we would never otherwise see. The book fair is fantastic. We buy our My Father's World curriculum (so we don't have to pay shipping) and all sorts of other birthday and Christmas gifts for the kids. If you homeschool in North Carolina and have not been, you should seriously consider going. See ya'll there.

Interviewed by a Homeschooler

Emma Curtis, one of the students in our local home school association (High Country Christian Home Schoolers), e-mail interviewed me for their online publication. Here are the questions and my answers:

1) How long have you been homeschooling?  Six years

2) Do you have any tips for new homeschoolers that plan to have large families?

We recommend selecting a curriculum that allows you to teach some subjects to several grade levels at once. We use My Father’s World. We are able to teach Bible, History, Vocabulary, Art, and Science to our three oldest together (5th, 4th, and 2nd grades). This is not only efficient for the parents, but it gives us more of a group learning experience with more dialogue and learning from the other students. Although they are studying the same basic subject, they are allowed to work at their own levels.

I would assume that a large family full of undisciplined, selfish consumers would be quite miserable. The only way it is possible to have a large family and a peaceful home is for each family member to see himself or herself as a productive part of a team. It is important to establish a culture of service, strong relationships, kindness, and shared purpose.

3) What are the Christian principles that your family embraces most?

The purpose of our family is to love God, love people, and make disciples. This is not unique, of course. We believe that is God’s purpose for all believers, families and churches. As I mentioned in the last question, having such a purpose is one of the keys to having a productive, peaceful home. All other principles, guidelines, or questions fall somewhere under these goals.

4) What are some of the greatest triumphs and trials our family experienced while planting a new church in Boone?

The greatest trial of our experience in starting Highland Christian Fellowship was working through significant theological and practical difference with other believers. This can be hard at two levels. First is when such difference are dealt with wrongly, without humility, patience, and love. Second is when such differences cannot be resolved, even when dealt with rightly. We have learned that it is important to discern between primary and secondary issues of faith. There are comparatively few primary issues of faith that must be met for Christian fellowship. In general, I’m afraid the Church often makes too much of secondary issues.

The greatest triumph of our experience has been the tremendous spiritual growth of everyone involved. Many of us have seen the last few years as providing the most significant spiritual growth in our lives. Now that we are established, our hope is that the greatest triumph will be that God uses us powerfully to see the lives of others transformed by the love and truth of Christ.

Organizing Chores for the Kids

Six kids (and two adults) can wreck a house in very little time. So we make the kids clean it up! We believe that kids are supposed to do chores just because they are part of our home (not for an allowance). It teaches them to take care of their own stuff, care about their environments, and learn to serve and be a part of a family and community. In addition, you just can't have a bunch of kids and expect (and thus train) them to all just be consumers in your house. Everyone pitches in. But we have found that teaching and managing six kids in doing chores is almost as hard as cleaning the house ourselves. Overtime, though, we have developed a pretty good system for dividing the chores among the kids. This weekend we found ourselves seeing a need to reevaluate and reorganize what we were doing because it wasn't working as well as we need it to. Then Dana remembered that she bought a set of books from Steven and Teri Maxwell that included a book on how to organize your children's chores, Managers of Their Chores: A Practical Guide to Children's Chores. So I read it over the weekend; It is outstanding!

There are several chapters on the biblical basis, the current benefits, and the future benefits of chores for children. I was impressed with the way they placed something as tedious as chores in the context of loving and depending on God. So we are going to try out their suggested method of managing and organizing our kid's chores. I was especially pleased to find that they have a website, chorepack.com, with digital material, forums, and other resources. There is even an online service called ChoreWare that helps you organize and print your own personalized version of the system. Although we haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend the book. The online service is easy to use and highly adaptable to each family's needs. We'll let you know how it goes!

"North! Or Be Eaten"

We opened our box from Amazon.com with great excitement. We knew that it contained the first two books (and only two for now) of The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson: On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness (here is my brief review) and North! Or Be Eaten. I had already finished listening to the audio book of One the Edge and loved every minute of it. So I dove right into North! I may be even better, if that is possible. I highly recommend these books. Here is a drawing of the Sea Dragons that appear in both books.

Raising Chickens

We have decided to raise chickens. Here are the reasons why:

1. To have fresh, natural eggs. 2. To save money on buying eggs (which we eat a lot of and which are expensive if you buy higher quality eggs). 3. To save money on buying chicken. Once the chickens quit laying well, we will butcher them for meat. 4. To press on in our journey to be resourceful, healthy, and self-sufficient. 5. To use as a source of education for the whole family.

I have learned that Rhode Island Red chickens are good for both eggs and meat. So, we are going to order 25 chicks from Welp Hatchery.  Here is my list of things to get so we are ready to care for that many chicks:

  • Construct a 13 square foot, 18 inch high cardboard box
  • Bedding - peat moss or wood chips
  • Chick feed - 50lbs, 20% protein
  • Heat lamp
  • Thermometer
  • One gallon waterer