On My Way To Heaven

My Friend, Eileen Lawyer, is my special guest and is sharing with us about Homeschooling One Child. It is a serie that is being posted in this corner of the cyberspace, on Fridays. Be welcome to follow her! (Part one, Laying the Foundations, is found here)

Welcome, grab a cup of coffee and listen to her…it is a delight!

Last week I wrote a few items of consideration for laying the foundation of your homeschooling life. What comes next? Read on…

What is the core of all learning? Well, the answer should be similar to “What is the chief end of man?” (Question #1 from the Westminster Shorter Catechism.) The answer to the catechism question is, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” If we truly believe this, which my husband and I do, then that is also our goal, or the core, of our homeschooling. How can our daughter glorify God and enjoy Him forever if she doesn’t know Him, His character, His Son? These are things you should know as well, so you may teach them.

How do you do this? Study your Bibles. Read and re-read the stories in Genesis, so that when a rainbow appears, you can bend down to your little one and point to the rainbow and repeat the story of who made it, and why, and what we’re to remember whenever we see it. Do this every time a rainbow appears, not just once. We don’t read our Bibles just once. We read them over and over. So, tell God’s stories over and over. Soon, when your child is able to speak, they will be able to answer your question, “Who made the beautiful rainbow?”

Your child’s education doesn’t begin at age five or six, it begins the minute you have your sweet bundle laid in your arms. You pray over your baby (she will learn to pray). You thank God for your meals (she will learn to who to thank). You hug your husband (she will learn the joy of being married). All of your day-to-day actions are teaching your child how to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

In Deuteronomy, God instructed the Hebrews:

“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.”

(Deu 6:5-7 KJV)

So, take the opportunities that God gives you. Lie on your bellies together on the lawn and watch the ants. Bundle up on a foggy morning, walk outside, and look at a spider’s web glistening with dewdrops. Spread a blanket under the evening sky to watch the stars, or lay with your faces to the sky during the day and create cloud animals. Do more than just watch these happenings. Relate them to our God. In Proverbs, God commends the ants for their ways. The book of Job talks of our God – the God who made the constellations. Show your child the beauty of God’s words and His world, for His words are life.

As your child gets older, you can ‘glorify him and enjoy Him forever’ in different ways. Last year, while Mike was at work, Rachel and I took our normal school day and threw it out the window. Instead we took a ‘flood day’ (as opposed to a ‘snow day’). Our winter had warmed up fast, the snow had turned to rain and the creeks were rising! Rachel and I put on our tall, rubber boots and headed out to a stream, which had become a swollen river. The walking path beside it was gone. Ponds existed where a field had previously been. We sloshed around in the gooey mud (coming close to falling many times) for hours. We made memories together. And, even though our books didn’t get opened once that day, both Rachel and I learned a tremendous amount about God - His blessings upon our lives, and the might of His hand to rule over all creation.

Be creative with your child and your time with them. Glorify God in your creativity, so that this generation and the generations to come will be blessed.

Eileen

(Note: I am not advocating that the ‘nature experience’ is more important than learning reading, writing and arithmetic. However, our daughter works diligently during school, allowing us a little freedom with our school schedule. This enables us to take flood days, or snow days, or spring days…)

Part three of this series, “Plays well With Others” is found here.

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Note…Today you can read me (Becky) in The Classical Experience, about “Memorizing Life”

This entry was posted on Friday, March 5, 2010 at 4:00 AM and is filed under Guests, Learning at Home with tags Daily Life, Family, Homeschool, Just Friends, womMEn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.