What are our children learning/doing?

What a blessing it is to have children!  I thought I'd take a few minutes to blog about what our children are doing these days.  We have so much fun learning together at home and in everything we do.  I am SO GRATEFUL to the Lord to have the privilege to stay home with our children.

Tim and I have been encouraged by the the following verses as we strive to raise our children to fear and love the Lord.  Deuteronomy 6:5-7 says, "And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.  And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:  And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up."

As excited as we are about educating our children at home, our number one focus and priority is to train their little hearts - to shepherd them and to mold them into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is fun to teach them how to read, how to write, how to add, etc.... but, oh how much more wonderful it is to teach them to hide God's Word in their hearts and to have them explain to us how it applies to their lives.  "I have hidden your Word in my heart that I might not sin against you."  My heart smiles every time I hear our girls singing God's Word around our home, in the car, outside playing, or at the store.  

So, what are our kids doing these days?  

Well, Hannah and Lauren continue to memorize Scripture, and Timmy will soon be catching on.  :)  Today we started working on Colossians 3:23-24, "Whatever you do, work at with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.  Since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.  It is the Lord Christ you are serving."

Tim shared these verses with the girls the other day while they were working on their "school work."  Everything they do, we want them to do unto the Lord... and oh what a challenge that is to us as parents to do the same.

What about Hannah?  She turned 4 just over three months ago.

As of  last week she read her first book to us - and she actually read it to me, sounding out all the words by herself, instead of just having it memorized.  She has "read" books to me before after memorizing them, but she did this one on her own.  I was so proud of her!!!  It's fun because educating our children at home allows them to learn at their own pace.  When they are ready to grasp a concept, I jump all over it.  But, if they are not ready yet, then we wait a while longer.  Hannah is ready and excited to learn how to read right now.  

She has known how to write all of her capital letters for quite a while now, but she can write almost all of her lower case letters now too.  Hannah is a great teacher to Lauren.  Anything she learns, she passes on to her sister.  We have an easel/chalk board.  Hannah has been teaching Lauren how to write her letters, and they have fun working together on this.

Hannah can also write all of our names by herself (Papa, Mama, Hannah, Lauren, Timmy, and many other words), and has also mastered simple addition.

Most of all, and most importantly, she is learning to trust the Lord, to pray from her heart, and to be joyful in all things.  We work on this daily, and now she is such an encouragement to Tim and me.  Just the other day she was reminding Tim to trust the Lord and that God ("the one true God") is amazing!  :)

What about Lauren?  She turned 3 just over three months ago.

She likes to memorize books and "read" them to us.  She also can write most of her capital letters now.  Just yesterday she surprised us and wrote 4 of our names all by herself (Papa, Mama, Hannah, Lauren), and as of today she can also write Timmy.  I was shocked because we haven't been working on this.  As I mentioned above, Hannah is a great teacher, and Lauren is a good student and loves to learn.  It's fun to watch our kids teach each other.

Lauren really enjoys coloring and does an amazing job coloring in the lines, almost as good as an adult.  She also likes to do connect the dots and simple mazes and loves to build with little legos. Both of our girls love playing with their baby dolls and being little mamas.  It is precious to watch them "train" their baby dolls as we are training them.  They don't miss a beat and are paying attention to everything.  

How about Timmy?  He is now 9 months old.

He is doing the army crawl these days and saying lots of new "words".  He also really enjoys holding our hands in order to walk across the room.  He is not ready to walk on his own, but he sure appreciates the helping hand as it gets him from one place to another much quicker. Timmy is able to entertain himself very well whenever he has big lego blocks.  One of our neighbors gave us a big box of legos that are just the right size for him... and the girls really enjoy them too.  It's fun to have a set of toys that all three kids can enjoy together.

As you can see, I am blessed to be the Mama of these precious cuties!!!

May we be faithful with these that the Lord has entrusted into our care.