Is God an afterthought in your homeschooling schedule?

So often I think in homeschooling we become concerned with the topics of Math, Reading, Science, Grammar... etc. Those things are important but, are we making a serious, fervent effort to teach our children about the Lord all through out the day? Is this an afterthought or is it something we infuse through out everything we teach them?

Lately the Lord has been impressing the following passage of scripture upon my heart:

Deuteronomy 11:18-21 (KJV)
"Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.
And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates: That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth."

God has been stirring in my heart to talk to my children about things of the Lord all through out the day; from morning when they wake until bedtime when I tuck them in. (Something to consider is that you can only do this all through out the day if you are with them - another blessing of homeschooling!) We have scheduled times of family Bible time through out the week but talking about the Lord and His word isn't a thing we should be scheduling in; it should be infused through out every conversation. I want to bring the Lord into each conversation; to have scripture and biblical principals ever before my children. The times recently I have begun to do this it has been such a blessing. When we are focused on things of the Lord we are so much more aware of His presence and our minds are not focused on petty temporal things. My children begin to look at things from a different perspective - they see God around them.

Lord, may this become an every day practice in our home. May our conversation and our thoughts be directed towards You. May we be looking to Your word and talking about Your ways all through out our day. May our children see things through Your eyes; through eternal eyes! As it says in Deuteronomy 11:22 may we "... carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow - to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to hold fast to Him."

When I grow up... I want to be just like Mommy

I was forwarded the following in an email and I knew it would bring a chuckle to other Mom's, as it did me!


Make sure to read the Mom's letter of explanation to the Teacher below the drawing.


Dear Mrs. Jones,
I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer. I work at Home Depot and I told Sarah how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had. Then I found one more in the back room, and several people were fighting over who would get it. Sarah's picture does NOT show me dancing around a pole. It's supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot. From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Smith

Parenting Tips

I will admit it, without hesitation, I am a fan of the Duggar Family. I figure since they seem to be doing a great job raising up 18 children to fear and love the Lord, their parenting tips might be worth noting!

The following top 5 parenting tips are listed on their website: The Duggar Family

1)Teach our children to love God with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength, and memorize God’s word together as a family.
2)Teach them to have a servant’s heart, leading by your example. Love your neighbor as yourself.
3)Daily read the Proverb of the Day that corresponds with the day of the month and discuss it as a family.
4)Diligently keep up with each child’s attitudes and actions and ask what is going on in their heart. Pray with them one on one letting them lead in prayer and then you closing the prayer time together.
5)Ask God to help you conquer anger because it can destroy your relationship with your children. Praise them ten times more than you correct them.

My heart's cry...

I posted the following on my blog "Making Jesus my Pearl" but I also wanted to share it here:

A Christian Woman’s Prayer

Lord,

I leave the ways of the world behind
To in you my treasure find.
May any strongholds of satan unfurl
I want you to be my pearl.

Lord, please fulfill your purpose for me;
May I in you alone find my identity.
May I be a blessing to my family;
A woman of faith and integrity.

Make me to be a godly mother and wife
and to daily live a surrendered life.
May I have a servant’s heart
and give me your wisdom to impart.

May I manage my home with care
and bathe each family member in prayer.
May I embrace each task with delight
and my attitude be honorable in your sight.

May I have reverent fear of you, Lord
and not be lured by the way of the world.
May I know Biblical femininity
and always dress with modesty and propriety.

Lord, may I be my husband’s helpmeet.
Help me to not tear down but to complete.
May I be a loving, submissive wife
and bring honor and joy to his life.

May my children know you in their youth
and believe your word to be truth.
May they always seek your face
and grow in your wisdom and grace.

Lord, in my home please always reside
and may our family be multiplied.
May we run after you with all our might
and to a lost world show your glorious light.

© 2009 Joanna W.
http://makingJesusmypearl.blogspot.com

(If this also is your prayer, please feel free to print off.
Please do not copy to another site without permission)

Fun ways to beat the winter time blues...

Winter can be hard in Northern Indiana. My girls and I love to be outside much of the day in the Spring and Summer. However, in the cold temperatures of Winter I really struggle with spending much time outside and we are mostly always indoors. This is fine for a season but it does cause some restlessness for my girls and a need for me to get more creative.

Here are some fun little activities we have done lately to help with the wintertime blues: (I'll post some photos later... they are refusing to upload right now!)

Bring the snow in! I put old towels out on the table and fill medium to large size containers or 9x13 baking dishes with snow! Give each child a container of snow and some small plastic toys and they will have a great time! After a while when they start to get bored with it you can pour in some warm water and show them how the snow melts. This then turns into a swimming pool for polly pockets or any action figure toys.

Shaving Cream: Spray some shaving cream on the table in front of your child. They can use small toys and pretend the toys are playing in the snow or they can spread out the shaving cream thin and then write or draw in it. Cleans up easily with a rag of soapy water and leaves the kitchen (and children) smelling good.

Home Made Playdoh: Making homemade playdoh provides more fun than store bought. The children get to help dump in the ingredients plus they take delight in playing with it when it's nice and warm! A fun creative twist is to allow the children to use rolling pins and roll it out (if you don't add food coloring it looks more like cookie dough). Then use cookie cutters to make pretend cookies and help the children sprinkle some glitter on top as pretend sprinkles! They'll love it.

Creative play: Give your children ideas of things to play that they might not think of on their own.
Examples:
One day my girls were sad I couldn't get our gas fireplace to come on. I decided to make up for it we should make our own pretend bonfire; complete with a fire pit (mega blocks), roasting sticks (tinker toys sticks), and marshmallows & hot dogs (tinkertoys)! The girls had a great time of pretend play! Sometime we are going to do this again and also get out the sleeping bags and pretend to camp by our pretend bon fire!

Have a pretend tea party. This is something we have done at home and at Mimi's house. Get out a play tea set. Provide a small amount of water, apple juice, or whatever you'd like, in the little tea pot. Allow the children to pour their own "tea". Provide fun little treats that will fit on the small tea party dishes for each of them to enjoy along with their tea, such as: mini-marshmallows, chocolate chips etc. If you want to be healthier cheerios and grapes are great too.
I've found that little ones love pouring their own "tea" so I often use water as they want to do this for quite some time. I use towels as our table cloth so that there is no need to worry about spills. They also loved to get dressed up in dress up clothes or Mimi's church dresses before coming to the tea party!

Feel free to share some of your own creative ideas for beating the winter time blues in the comments section below!

A visit from a Laundry Fairy

All of us Moms are familiar with having laundry, laundry & more laundry to do!
Do you ever wish a little Laundry Fairy would just appear and take over this task for you? Well, below you can see that this did occur at my house... and what a good job she did!

My Prayer today...

My prayer taken from reading Job 29 4 & 5

Lord, may your intimate friendship continue to bless my house,
Thank you, Almighty, that you are with me and that my children surround me!

Blog Focus & New Blog

Dear Readers:
As you likely know this started out as a homeschooling blog however you've likely noticed much of my posts have began to focus on what God is doing in my heart in regards to modesty, feminity, and finding my identity in Christ alone.

I've decided in order to keep things more organized and on track it would be better to have the focus of this blog return to the subject of homeschooling and have a seperate blog for sharing about what God is teaching me about biblical womanhood. So, if you want to continue following along with my posts that began about my "Two weeks in a dress challenge" and what God revealed in my heart out of that, those posts will soon be available on Making Jesus My Pearl. For posts more related to homeschooling & Christian parenting please continue following this blog!

Thanks for reading.

Give THANKS!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving! Give thanks to the Lord!
"Give thanks to the LORD because he is good, because his mercy endures forever."
Psalm 118:1

Why I am thankful:

For a loving, Christian husband who is my best friend
For the blessing of children
For the blessing of being a homemaker
For Christian parents & rich Christian heritage
For my sister & her family
For my in laws & extended family
For loving friends
For the new Church Family God has brought us to
For God doing a miracle in my heart & my marriage this fall
For God continuing to refine me & show me hidden sin in my heart
For God's unfailing love & His forgiveness - Thank you for not giving up on me Lord!
For the Holy Spirit & his leading