Why Do We Home School? (Part 2) - Character

  "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.  And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.  And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates."  (Deuteronomy 6:5-9)

 The Lord commands parents to teach their children to love Him with all their heart, soul, and might.  This takes place as we intentionally spend time with our children - when we sit, walk, lie down, and rise up.  This encompasses all day every day, and we are responsible for what is going in our children's hearts and minds.  We believe this to be such a blessing of home schooling - being able to pour into our children from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to bed.   When they wake up in the morning, we are able to greet them with a hug and say, "Good morning!  This is the day that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it!"  When they go to bed we are able to pray and sing together as a family.  And as we go throughout our day together we are able to praise the Lord all day long and bring attention to His handiwork in everything they are learning.

   Above the education we can give our children - the facts and the different subjects - math, reading, history, science, etc. - the most important thing we can teach our kids is about the Lord Jesus Christ and about CHARACTER.  In teaching these two things, we really can cover all the different subjects as we go along.  It's beautiful how it works!!!  

   Character is not taught out of a book.  It is taught out of the Bible, yes, but mainly is it taught through parents just living life with their children.  Tim and I are always aware of teaching our children about character.  Recently, I was able to introduce the word "perseverance" to Hannah and Lauren as we persevered in a task together.  Just yesterday, Tim and Hannah made beef jerky together.  We have a dehydrator and especially like to made jerky and dried apples.  We can stack 10 trays high on our dehydrator, which makes for a lot of work to get the meat or the apples on the trays, and our girls love to help us do this.  Tim and Hannah worked together diligently and raced against the clock yesterday to get all the ground beef on 10 trays in less than one hour.  Having this time limit forced them to stay focused on their task and forced Hannah to persevere.  There are many details involved in jerky making - mixing the spices in the meat, loading the jerky gun and cleaning it out often during the process, squeezing the meat out of the gun onto the trays, stacking the trays, etc.  Hannah had her sleeves rolled up and was working hard to help her Papa complete a task that we then could all enjoy the benefits of later. It turned out that the clock beat Tim and Hannah by a few minutes, but they were still encouraged to have persevered through the task and enjoyed much good, meaningful conversation and Papa/daughter time during the process.  Not only did they talk about perseverance, but Tim modeled it before Hannah.  Beautiful!

   Our children can recite well the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  But, what good is it for them to recite these things if they cannot live them out?  And how can they live out these things without first seeing them lived out in their parents (Tim and me)?  And how can Tim and I live these things out without first living in complete dependence upon the Lord Jesus, which is what we really want our children to learn to do?  Quite a process, indeed... but, it is so simple.  There is no formula.  It is all about dependence on our Savior.

   Do we make mistakes as parents?  Oh, yes indeed.  But, what better way for us to teach our children about humility and forgiveness than to humble ourselves before them and admit our flaws and ask for their forgiveness, which they willingly give every time.

   So, how do we teach character?  First - dependence on the Lord to live in and through us as parents.  But, second, we are extremely intentional.  We are always looking for ways to teach about pride, humility, love, forgiveness, patience, perseverance, encouragement, etc.  Every moment is a teachable moment - whether we are sitting at a meal together, riding in the car, taking a walk, or working on a project.  

  Now that is true education that will last right into eternity!  :)