I have been home schooling now for approximately fourteen years. So, depending on in what life season I find myself or even what home schooling struggles I may be experiencing, my reasons for attending the Convention vary.

At times I have attended simply to hear conference speakers who helped me with new ideas in organizing school schedules, house management, and more. Because we have six very unique kiddos, there were times when I searched through the Convention schedule, seeking out speakers dealing directly with teaching tools, methods, and ideas to help me teach to the learning style and special needs of each child. In the incredibly overwhelming, busy years, I sought out conference speakers and topics that would soften my burnout and re-motivate me to persevere in the important task to which God called me: home schooling.

Not only have my reasons for attending varied each year, but my companions at Convention have varied as well. Some years I go it alone for a time of recharging and rest. There have been several years in which my enthusiasm for the upcoming Convention vacation piqued the interest of a home schooling friend who had never attended, and we turned it into a girls’ weekend of shopping, learning, and laughter. My husband and I have used it as a “date” weekend to spend time together in uninterrupted conversation and to plan for the next school year. Finally, at other times our family of eight attended, registering our family through the entire spectrum of adult conference, Teen Program, and Children’s Program. (As a side note, the Teen and Children’s Programs are wonderful, but you must Early Bird Register, because they fill up fast. We missed the Teen Program one year because we waited too late to register.)

I admit that the Exhibit Hall full of vendors can be overwhelming with so many choices and opportunities meshed together in one location, but consider approaching it prayerfully, asking God to bring to your attention the items pertinent and needful to your family. My husband brings great clarity for me in this area. As we peruse books and curricula, he seems to have a better eye for what will work for our family. Even a friend or family member, whomever you are with, can provide a “second opinion.” What is incredibly helpful about the Exhibit Hall is that it provides a good overview of everything that is available to home schoolers, such as a plethora of curricula; Houston-area choral, band, karate, and sports groups; colleges and universities all over the country; field trip opportunities; and more. Another plus is that many vendors will give Convention discounts and/or free shipping on items ordered.

The THSC Convention has also become a “Convention vacation.” THSC has masterfully created Add-On events for families, so there are opportunities for discounts at varying local venues, such as Moody Gardens. We bought Add-On tickets to the Bob Smiley Comedy Show last year and the Tim Hawkins Comedy Show the year before. These shows were much-needed times of setting aside our serious schedules and concerns of life and laughing as a family—laughing so hard we cried! As much as I enjoyed the comedy shows, the look on my children’s faces and their laughter will be forever ingrained as a treasured memory in my mind.

When my children attend the Convention, we ride the free trolley from The Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel to The Woodlands Mall food court for lunch at least one day of Convention. The trolley ride provides giggles and laughter from some little boys who think it is incredibly cool, and it also gives riders a glimpse of The Woodlands area, passing by local shopping and restaurants and the Cynthia Woods Pavilion.

Another fun Convention lunch tradition our family has is what we call the “THSC Picnic Lunch.” Families who choose to bring their own lunch to Convention congregate picnic style in the walkway between the parking garage and hotel. Our boys enjoy watching the cars and activity on the street below, and there is a feeling of family and community as many home schooling families all enjoy lunch together.

If a trolley ride or a picnic lunch in a walkway does not sound attractive, or a walk through traffic is not appealing, there are waterway taxis that run along the waterway surrounding the hotel. These boat taxis will pick you up and “ship” you back and forth between the hotel and The Woodlands Mall for a small fee.

Some additional activity options for Pre-Convention fun include the Riva Row Boathouse, which offers kayak rentals for paddling the waterway, and spray-and-play parks in the local city parks, which provide free fun in the sun and playground time.

THSC Southwest Convention & Family Conference is so many different things to so many people. It is affirming and informative for those considering home schooling. It is knowledge building for those in the thick of their home schooling years. It is encouraging for those who feel beat down by the daily grind, who lose their focus or merely their energy to do what needs to be done, and it can change those feelings of inadequacy by giving you tools of capability. It is family fun and is full of memory making that will last through generations.

Wherever you are in your home schooling adventure, I encourage you to come to The Woodlands, catch a glimpse of the diversity of all of the other families who have also chosen to home school, and be encouraged that you are not alone in this journey. Come and enjoy. I’ll be there.

Pertinent and Helpful Links

THSC Southwest Convention & Family Conference

The Woodlands Waterway Marriott

The Woodlands Trolley

Spray & Play Parks:
Timarron
Sawmill

Kayaking on Waterway

The Woodlands Mall

Boat taxis

Woodlands Waterway (literal waterway)

Cynthia Woods Pavilion

The post Healing Tradition appeared first on Texas Home School Coalition.

Yeah. Me, too. The question is: When you get to that point, what do you do next?

Take a look at a note from a mom who is right at that crossroads.

I am home schooling my two very active boys, ages seven and five, and I am stuck. I think the biggest reason I am stuck is that I taught special education in the public school system for nine years and I just have in my mind how our school day “should look,” and it doesn’t fit, and, honestly, home schooling is really frustrating and I don’t like it. I just can’t seem to break out of that and embrace what works best for us! I also think I have “too many” ideas and things I want to cover and have trouble focusing on what is best.
–Losing Heart

Dear Losing Heart,

I have so been where you are. I understand your heavy heart. When I first began home schooling, I tried my best to make my school look and walk and talk like a traditional classroom. That was my model. I didn’t think it was a way to teach; I thought it was the way to teach—the only way. After all, if it wasn’t, why would teaching schools teach future teachers to use it? Thankfully, I hung in there, and with each passing year, my classroom grew more and more relaxed, less and less structured, and more and more able to follow the gifts and interests of my children.

This is a transition that almost every home schooling mom/teacher must make. We all start with what we know: the public school model. Admittedly, a few continue with that traditional model, but they are rare, and I believe that in doing so, they lose out on the many glorious options available to them and their children.

Here is the bad news: Moms who have been trained as teachers have the hardest time finding new models. You have already expressed this awareness, but you need to know you are not alone in this. It’s hard for everyone. It’s especially hard for teachers.

Keep in mind, the traditional model is not a bad one if you have twenty or so students and even more kids coming up the ranks. When the goal is to process a lot of children through a system, the public school model is not a bad one—but you’ll have to let some other things go. In that system, you cannot follow the strengths of the individual child; there isn’t time. There are too many other kids to consider. It’s an okay system for moving groups en masse through a process. However:

• If a particular student takes an interest in rocketry and all the physics behind it, nothing can be done, because the whole class doesn’t share the interest and it’s not on the lesson plan.
• If a particular student has a gift for writing and would love to delve into Shakespeare and all the unfamiliar richness of that older language, nothing can be done, because the whole class doesn’t share the interest and it’s not on the lesson plan.
• If a particular child shows an early interest in chemistry and would love to play with a lab kit, learning about reactions and properties, nothing can be done, because the whole class doesn’t share the interest and it’s not on the lesson plan.
• If a particular student just isn’t getting multiplication facts and needs three times the usual amount of time allotted to master it, nothing can be done, because the whole class doesn’t share the need and it’s not on the lesson plan.

In a traditional classroom, we move onward for the good of the majority; it makes sense to do so. Holding twenty-five kids back because of the needs or interests of one child does not make sense.

But in home schooling, it is not about the majority. It is about one child at a time.

(Can I get an “Amen”? J)

In home schooling you can follow delights. You can follow interests. You can address challenges. You can do pretty much anything that teaches a child that learning is fun and wonderful and lifelong, so before you give up, I would suggest you try different approaches. How about a unit study that focuses on something that absolutely delights your child?

Bugs? Monster trucks? The military? Firefighters? China? Davy Crockett?

Make models. Collect samples. Go on field trips. Watch kids’ documentaries. Read biographies of people who are into this subject. Role-play. Perhaps most importantly, find another home schooling mom who has already made this transition, and see if you can shadow her in her schooling for a week. Join together for a time. Share the school week or month. Watch what she does differently. Give yourself permission to step away from traditional, even if only for a month.

Should I Teach Subjects in Order?

When I first began home schooling I collected scope-and-sequence documents from around the country: public schools, private schools, expensive prep schools, schools for gifted students, and Montessori schools. I studied them to get a sense of the most comprehensive scope and sequence I could formulate for my own school. As a result, I made an amazing discovery: Other than a few essentials in learning to read, and of course, math, there wasn’t a clear path. Some schools studied earth science in fifth grade, and others studied life science. Some studied ancient Egyptians, while others were learning about Thomas Jefferson. Some learned metaphors and similes, while others were learning about proper citations. For almost everything, there was no clear chronology of learning.

This was a very freeing revelation for me. I realized that as long as they got the same information into their heads by the time they graduated, the method and sequence of how they got it could be completely of my choosing!

I was free to make learning delicious. This thought should liberate you from designing your school based on how it “should look.” Instead, apply a new method.

What would you need to do for your child to say, “That was wonderful! Can we do more?”

There it is. That should be your method. That should be your guide. If you started with that idea and changed just one lesson in your school day, you would see the difference. I suspect that soon you would change another and then another, until, before you knew it, learning in your school would be delicious. And you’d never want to stop.

The post Letting Go of the Teacher in You appeared first on Texas Home School Coalition.

“Platypuses can’t be mammals if they lay eggs!” My children issue the challenge. I leap. I search in Volume “P.” I find proof! Platypuses are indeed rare mammals that do indeed lay eggs! For some strange reason, this type of exchange just makes my day.

My fascination with encyclopedias began at a young age—when I got my own set, for my own room, at ten years old. Quickly, “A” became my favorite volume because of all the uniforms, weapons, and insignia of the Army. “M” was second best because of Money. (Did you know they used to print $10,000 bills and that Salmon B. Chase’s picture was on them?) Other volumes popular with me were “S” and “N-O.” While other kids were hiding under their covers with a flashlight and a Hardy Boys mystery, I was secretly perusing navy ships and plastic overlays of human anatomy.

Sadly, all that encyclopedia browsing did not seem to give me a lifelong encyclopedic knowledge of everything. In fact, the older I get, the more I know that I do not know much at all. Fortunately, I have also realized that I will not ever know everything anyway, so I am okay with it. However, I do want my children to see me wanting to know things. Enthusiasm for learning can be contagious. Therefore I retain my habit of browsing.

Really, it is like taking a quick tour of the universe, moving at light speed. Just think: where else can you go from reading about the Gutenberg Bible (and seeing a page of it!) to the history of Bigamy, then quickly on to Bigfoot and ending with the Battle of Bighorn all in the span of three minutes? Who needs race cars or rockets when you can zoom through space and time like that?

It is not an uncommon occurrence for me—in the middle of a sentence—to stop talking and walk straight to the World Book Encyclopedia to find a fact to support my statement. For example, not long ago we were in a debate about whether there is a googol (that is a 10 with 99 zeroes after it) of molecules in the whole earth, including everything on it, plus the atmosphere. I said no, there are not that many molecules in the whole earth, but at least one of my children refused to believe me. I attacked the problem with a calculator and a pile of encyclopedias.

To find out the number of molecules in the whole earth, first I had to find out how many molecules there are in one cubic centimeter of earth. So I needed “M” for Mole and/or Molecule. Then, needing to know how many atoms there are in a molecule of carbon (the most common element), I grabbed “C” (and also “E,” for Element, just in case). Then I had to know the mass of the earth, so having “E” handy was a good idea. To calculate cubic kilometers of a sphere with a 25,000-mile circumference required some now-dusty geometric formulae, so “G” was the fourth volume added to the pile. The volume of the atmosphere was tough, but it does not add up to that much, really.

Now, as it turns out, the earth does not even have close to a googol of molecules of matter, so the question became, “How about the entire solar system?”

I got “S.” It was a fortunate thing I started with Sun rather than Pluto, as I quickly learned that the sun has ninety-five percent of the matter in the whole solar system, which made everything simpler from then on. So, how big is the sun? Well, it could hold about 1.3 million earths, so that made things really easy. Thank heaven (and whoever developed the idea of not having to write out all those zeroes) for exponentiation! According to my calculations, the entire solar system would not have a googol of atoms in it! (I believe it is somewhere around 0⁷¹, give or take a dozen zeroes. If someone tries this calculation and proves me wrong, please let me know!)

Of course, by the time I had discovered this awesome fact, I was not only alone at the table but was the only one in the house! I wanted my revelation to be dramatic, so I taped a few pieces of paper together and actually wrote out the 10¹⁰⁰, 10⁷¹, and 10⁹ to show how big the number really is. When I finally found the kids all playing in the sunshine and presented my findings, they were notably unimpressed. One of my children was angered at the very idea of a googol, grumbling, “What’s the use of a number if there’s no way to use it?” I went back to get “G” to find out what kind of crazy guy would name a useless number. (It was the crazy mathematician’s son who dubbed it “googol.”) All in all, it was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon—for me.

Now, some may claim that I could have done the whole thing faster (and probably more accurately) with the Internet. They may be right. However, there is a richness in the experience of searching through six volumes of an encyclopedia to answer such a question. It is an experience that just cannot be replaced by typing a few words into the other Google. My kids may tease me about my encyclopedia-grabbing habits, but I know they will grow up with a sense of the value—and fun—of browsing, using, and keeping handy a traditional set of actual, heavy, paper, honest-to-goodness encyclopedias.

The post Encyclopedia Dad appeared first on Texas Home School Coalition.

I recently read a book titled The Good and Beautiful God by James Bryan Smith, and I am now in the process of completing The Good and Beautiful Life by the same author. These books help readers take a hard look at what we believe about God and about how we are to live our lives, teaching us that we are people of narratives, or stories. We think and talk in stories. For example, if growing up someone had a father who was angry and mean, that person may picture God as an angry God waiting for them to mess up so He can punish them. They may harbor an attitude of just waiting for lightning to strike if they do something wrong.

In The Good and Beautiful God, Smith challenges his readers to go to God’s Word and check the scriptures to see if the “story” they are listening to really depicts who God is or if it is simply something that past experience—or even a lesson from a parent, a teacher, or a preacher—has brought them to believe.

When we examine and challenge our untrue stories about God and about ourselves, it changes the way we view God; it also opens up a whole new way to live. I once saw an object lesson that drove home this point. First, we were shown an old cardboard box with a candle inside, closed up tight, which represented the times we try to keep God in a nice little neat package with which we are comfortable. As a result, all we see is this bound-up box, which represents a bound-up life. Next, holes were torn in the sides and top of the box, representing our lives’ imperfections and the struggles we have walked through with God. Finally, the candle in the box was lit, and because the box was torn, the beautiful light shone from within and illuminated the room.

A main point of that lesson is that we as Christians are not bound by the expectations of others or even our expectations of ourselves. It is in the struggles, in the hard times, in the day-by-day and in the transparency of who we really are–not in some made-up version of perfection–that God’s light shines through us and transforms us into joyful people, even in work, and into loving people, even in busyness. That light does not stop after it changes our lives; it reaches to anyone with whom we come in contact. It is a life lived in the moment, where we actually experience where we are right now and what God has in store for us, as opposed to constantly focusing our attention on the next upcoming event. It is walking outside and realizing that the clouds look like a painting and stopping for a moment in gratitude for something so beautiful. It is living in such a way as to be present in the moment and expressing gratitude to the Lord for His provision and blessings in our lives.

This whole putting-God-in-a-box mentality affects many areas of our lives, not just our spiritual walks. I would venture to say that many of us try to package our home school in a nice, neat little box too. We tend to take our past experiences, whatever they are–public school, private education, a book we have read, or something someone told us as fact—and we try to fit our schedules and our schools into that box.

When we first started homeschooling, I set up our school just like a public school. We started at a certain time, and we did every subject at a set time, keeping a rigid schedule. We were bound to our home during public school hours, and I believe I just about “worksheeted” my kiddos to death. Trust me when I say we had pure frustration throughout our household, which caused me to begin to question whether I was even capable of doing this home schooling thing because it just was not working.

Little by little through the years, God began to open my eyes to the world out there. The lid of the box was opened, and I realized that just about every step we take in a day is a learning experience. Driving down the road, if my boys saw a combine harvester, we began to talk about what a combine is, which led to discussions about farming and different crops. They will probably remember that discussion much longer than if they had read a little story about it and answered multiple-choice questions for a good grade.

This realization of mine gave way to the excitement about the freedom and flexibility we have as home schoolers. I mean, really, pretty much the sky is not even the limit! I began gearing our schooling more toward the individual needs of each of my children. I began to pray that God would fill me with creative ways to teach my kids—ways that did not even look like “school” to them. There are so many creative and fun ways to teach that do not fit the traditional mold.

A sweet friend of mine decided to pull her son out of public school around the first grade. He was constantly getting into trouble. He had difficulty paying attention and had begun to ask her questions like, “Am I a bad boy?” So she withdrew him from the school and began to homeschool him. She quickly realized that he had difficulty reading and eventually found out that he was dyslexic. It was an incredible struggle for her to get him to read anything. She worked and worked to get him to do his schoolwork, with very little success.

Then . . . she began to think outside the box and try new things. One idea she had was to plan elaborate, long treasure hunts. Her son loved a great adventure, and as far as he knew, these treasure hunts had nothing to do with school; they were play. She did not simply write a few clues on some pieces of paper. She spent a great deal of time creating intricate treasure hunts that helped her son develop his reading skills to a much greater extent than if she had tried to sit down with him and “do reading.” He is a high school student now and achieving great success academically. He no longer sees himself as a “bad boy.”

Looking at life this way is definitely a learning process that continues for the rest of our lives, a decision to venture outside the norm, to open our eyes to new possibilities and opportunities to instill in our children a love of learning and a love of life instead of surrendering ourselves to a routine or a requirement that frustrates even the best of us. With each day there is a new chance to start over, a new day to enjoy and embrace whatever God has in store for us at that particular time, on that particular day. My hope is that at the end of my life there will be no box at all but instead I will have learned to embrace life in the freedom that God intends and the faith in the One who created me and has my future anyway.

The post Breaking the Proverbial Box appeared first on Texas Home School Coalition.

“It is said that one machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine, however, can do the work of one extraordinary man.” – Tehyi Hsieh

For thousands of years, approximately eighty percent of the earth’s workforce was primarily focused on raising enough food for survival. This percentage still holds true in many Third World countries. However, with the advent of modern machinery and enhanced crops, only 1.5 percent of the workforce in the United States now grows the food that feeds our nation and much of the rest of the world. It has been rightly said that starvation and malnutrition are a result of political and transportation issues rather than lack of production. What happened to all those workers who used to be farmers? For the most part, they moved to the cities, looking for jobs in factories.

Unfortunately, we have seen a huge decrease in the number of manufacturing jobs, as factories are automated with advanced robotics or jobs are moved overseas to take advantage of cheap labor. Actually, there is no reason that a moderately small percentage of the population, given the right tools, could not manufacture all the items the world needs. Short supply of these items, just like shortages of food, is caused or will be caused by political issues and transportation, not by production capability. If manufacturing jobs have disappeared, where did the workers go? To a large extent they have switched to high-technology careers and so brought about the advent of the Information Age.

History is repeating itself. High-technology jobs are moving overseas to tap cheaper labor markets and are throwing the industry into turmoil. We find ourselves entering another new era in which life sciences, physics, chemistry, and high technology converge to create the next wave of human advancement: nanotechnology. Nano, the Greek word for dwarf, means a billionth. To put it into perspective, a nanometer refers to a spatial measurement that is 1/75,000th the width of a human hair. Nanotechnology is focused on building machines at the atomic level, primarily via chemical composition.

In the future, clogged arteries may very well be cleared by tiny, invisible robots that have been injected into the bloodstream. A farmer may treat his fields with a “dust” made of sensors that report the health and moisture levels of his crops. The whole nature of warfare could change. Computer monitors are expected to be wall-sized and only the thickness of cloth. Because the speed of computers is limited by the speed of light, the smaller they are the faster they can operate. Supercomputers will eventually be the size of marbles and cost about the same. Nantero, Inc., a company that is starting to produce nanotubes for computer memory, is building a technology that will eventually be able to store every book, movie, and musical score ever produced in something the size and cost of today’s desktop computer. Add to this trend the uncharted possibilities of the Internet, and it makes one’s head swim.

Where does all this leave home schooling parents, who are directing the education of their children and are responsible for preparing them for what might come? True, we already have some advantages. The current public school system of children segregated by age and led by an instructor is geared for creating a workforce destined for manufacturing jobs that are long gone. If the future gives us the power to hold a world of knowledge in a small box, display it on a wall-sized screen, and interact with it as easily as we do a telephone, then the need for public educational institutions and instructors will cease to exist. Careers of the future will demand individuals whose education is characterized by custom-fitted curriculum, an emphasis on self-learning, a focus on creative thinking skills, and the ability to adjust and adapt in real time to student, teacher, and family needs. These things cannot be provided within the established education structure. Already educational institutions find themselves increasingly unable to produce students who can think and create or graduates who can succeed in the new economy.

In the future, knowledge will become subordinate to rarer qualities such as integrity and self-discipline. Knowledge will be widely available and may be accessed almost without cost; however, character will always be at a premium. With the advance of technology and the universal availability of information will also come an avalanche of entertainment, pornography, games, virtual worlds, and gambling that will drain dry the minds and strength of the masses who are enslaved by it. The temptations will be great. Those who have been trained to keep their minds free and to be vigilant in doing what is right will prosper just as Daniel prospered in Babylon.

Home schooling, by its nature, can be the best environment for producing the kind of men and women who will be needed in the future. The potential for sharpening minds, fortifying hearts, tempering wills, and directing spirits is unlimited, but all that potential comes with a profound twofold responsibility for home schooling parents. First, particularly for fathers, if we want our children to pass on the home school legacy to coming generations, we must make sure our sons have the skills and tools they will need to earn a living for their families. How tragic it would be if we were to send our children into the workplace equipped only for the future equivalent of making buggy whips.

Also, our sons and daughters need to understand that home education is more than school, more than the acquisition of information. It is a way of living. Our daughters must be equipped to pursue that way of life, being dedicated to preparing the next generation for another two-pronged invasion of the future. It is true: no number of machines now, or in the future, will be able to do the work of one extraordinary man. Home schooling provides a wonderful opportunity for the Lord to turn ordinary students into extraordinary people.

The post Home Schooling for the Future appeared first on Texas Home School Coalition.

The opening of the twenty-first century finds the people of God experiencing a growing yoke of oppression from a multiplicity of sources. Even in the formerly Christian nations of the West, churches and families are steadily finding themselves trodden under foot of men (Matt.5:13) as they have neglected to be salt and light within their respective cultures. The age-old clash between the forces of Satan and the people of God has indeed begun to escalate. Christian home educators must, therefore, recognize the urgent need to labor diligently and pray that God would use their efforts to raise up the type of dynamic and courageous leaders that the Church so desperately needs.

For far too long Christian parents and church leaders have vainly imagined that they can produce strong and godly leaders while they permit their children to be trained in Pharaoh’s court. Such thinking explains, in large measure, why there are so few young adults in the world today who are prepared to stand in the gap and be counted for Christ. The Christian church and the family are learning the hard way that “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” It is profoundly naïve for those who love the Lord to think that dynamic Christian leaders can be constructed by using man-centered textbooks, carnally minded educators, and humanistic philosophies.

In 1943 the famous Christian author C. S. Lewis published a book titled The Abolition of Man. In this work, Lewis argues that it is foolish for people to suppose that godly, courageous men can be made within an educational environment that is profoundly materialistic and secular. C. S. Lewis wrote:

“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful. We strip young men and women of the certainty that they are created in the image of God, and we are surprised when they act like the beasts of the field.”

More than sixty-five years ago, C. S. Lewis recognized what most Christians living in the West today refuse to acknowledge: We have no business supposing that Almighty God will bless a nation with godly leaders when righteousness is permitted to be removed from the sphere of learning. As the Scriptures so clearly state, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” (Psalm 1:1-3)

Until professing Christians get on their knees and repent of their unwillingness to follow a biblical approach for the training and education of their children, they can scarcely expect the Lord to grant them the ability to raise up Gideons who can help to heal their land. It is not good luck or fate that sends courageous and just leaders into a society, but God. Every child born into this world comes to the planet at just the precise moment of God’s choosing (Acts 13:36). The Lord alone knows whom to send to free a people from the poverty that is caused by their sin—and when such a person needs to be sent. God even knows to which household to send such a child so that he will be trained to accomplish all of his God-ordained destiny.

Parents in general, and home school parents in particular, need to embrace the truth that their children have been sent into the kingdom in accordance with God’s perfect timing. When parents truly comprehend this marvelous truth, they will then realize why they need to ask God for the boldness to pray that they would be granted the privilege to train up a Gideon or an Esther. How exciting it is for Christian home educators to walk by faith and to know that their labors are not in vain in the Lord—to know that their children, to one degree or another, will be used by God in future days to turn the hearts of people in the direction of righteousness.

More than 100 years ago Josiah Gilbert Holland penned the now-famous poem “God, Give Us Men!” It communicates so well the prayer that should be on the hearts and lips of God-fearing parents in every generation. Christian home school parents would do well to take the time to read this poem with their families as they earnestly pray for God to bless their labors to train up a whole flock of Gideons.

God give us men! A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office can not buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty, and in private thinking;
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.
God give us men;
Men who serve not for selfish booty;
But real men, courageous, who flinch not at duty,
Men of sterling worth;
Then wrongs will be addressed;
And right will rule the earth.
God give us men!

Josiah Gilbert Holland – 1895

Gideon, the youngest man in his father’s house, was humble enough to doubt himself, yet wise and courageous enough to trust God to do the impossible. Christian parents and church leaders need to ask God to raise up more men like Gideon. The hour is later than most Christians in the West think. Such believers are, in many cases, already surrounded by their enemies and marked out for destruction. Now is the time for believers in this part of the world to plead with the Ruler of the nations to spare their lands from the chaos and destruction that they so richly deserve. While there is yet time, God’s people must bow before the throne of God to request that souls be sent into the kingdom who know that one dedicated Christian can chase a thousand enemies of the cross; who understand that if God be for us, no power on earth can stand against us; and who believe that the Lord can still perform wonders, even to the moving of mountains.

May God grant parents within the Christian home school community the vision and courage to persevere in the Christ-centered training of those who will be the leaders of tomorrow. If the once-great nations of the West are to have bright futures, it will only be because the Lord sees fit to raise up a new breed of men who are willing to walk in the old paths.

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The event was a time of sweet fellowship among home school families, at which parents and children alike were encouraged and edified by one another, but I was hungry for the more intimate fellowship of a smaller group. I also had a very heavy burden for my teenage boys, and as I watched them visit with the other teens, I noticed that they had little interaction with the men. I was blessed to see men attend the family event with their wives and children, and I was grateful to see dads encouraging one another, but I knew my boys needed men in their lives who would purposefully and intentionally mentor them. The interaction they had at these large events was simply not enough.

I realized that night that my children and I were in a new season in our lives, and while I thanked the Lord for the sweet friendship and fellowship that He had always provided for our family, I began to pray for men who would be willing to mentor my boys.

I am always amazed at the ways in which the Lord answers my prayers. Not only did He provide my boys with mentors, but He blessed us with the lasting friendship of two families who opened their hearts and their homes to us. When the Lord impressed upon my heart two families in which the men had already extended an open hand of friendship to my sons, I asked those families if they would be willing to have a Bible study with our family. We began to meet twice a month to share a meal together and spend some time studying the Word. We sang together, worshiped together, and ate together; these two dads walked alongside my boys and became surrogate fathers to them.

While our three families met together during that season, we also became regular guests in each of their homes and were quite comfortable fellowshipping with them as individual families–despite the fact that ours was a single-parent family. Although I had hosted many events in my home for our home school group, my friendship with these families gave me the courage and confidence I needed to open my home to the more intimate fellowship that is shared when two or three families come together to share a meal and fellowship. We were no longer a broken home that needed to hide behind the crowd of a large group so that no one would notice ours was a single-parent family. We were a whole family that was welcomed into the fellowship of another whole family. What began as a season of loneliness became a season of sweet friendship, rest, and growth.

There are seasons to all things, and families need different types of fellowship at different seasons. But, the saying we all heard as children still holds true: “To have a friend, you must first be a friend.” I have met many home school moms who are desperately lonely, just as I was during that difficult season in my life. Although social media may be a good way to meet other home school families, it is not a substitute for face-to-face contact, and although larger home school events fill an important need in the home school community, home school parents–especially home school moms–also need the encouragement and edification that is shared between friends.

Friendships are built when people share their hearts and their lives with one another, and as home schooling has grown and the world has become connected by the Internet and social media, every home school family knows at least one other home school family, so there are countless opportunities to build community and fellowship with one another. You do not have to have a large home, be a leader in the home school group, or have all the answers to every home schooling dilemma to reap the blessings of opening your home and your heart to another.

Every family–whether it is a two-parent home, a single-parent home, parents of many, or parents of one–can find ways to connect with others. Invite another family to share a meal. If you feel your home is not adequate to host even one or two families, do not let that stop you from fellowship. Invite one or two other families to a cookout in the park. Be proactive in your home school support group and help host events–large-group fellowships do fill a need! Be attentive to the needs of others within your group–perhaps your family is the one called to open their doors to a single-parent family or a family with younger children. Befriend a family with a special needs child and learn how to help them. There are countless opportunities for fellowship, so open your home—you may find that the Lord has opened wide the door of your heart and filled it to overflowing with the sweet blessing of fellowship.

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I have always enjoyed having people come to my home, sharing a meal with them, hearing their stories; “the more the merrier” is my motto. Many times I would worry about how I would stretch the food in order to feed everyone. When holidays approached, our limited income would often cause stress about being able to afford the special holiday food items I desired to serve. Sometimes I would not be able to get those items until the day before I needed them, which added to the stress I already felt.

Like a lot of people, I watch “Extreme Couponing” in amazement at what people can achieve through the use of coupons. I also watch it in disgust at the huge stockpiles some people have amassed. Ultimately, I was inspired to check into couponing because my husband’s income is cyclical, and we struggle through December, January, and February each year, having all the same bills but less income. I thought that perhaps I could learn to coupon and help us to get through the lean times more creatively.

I watched tutorials online about couponing (a favorite site is www.livingwellspendingless.com), learned about the specifics of couponing at various stores (because each has its own policy and parameters), and started off by buying two newspapers each week. I call what I do “semi-extreme couponing,” because I am not amassing a stockpile that needs its own bedroom, nor do I get hundreds of dollars worth of items for a pennies on the dollar.

In a short amount of time, I had six months’ worth of laundry detergent, body wash, toothpaste, razors, pantry items, and more, for a minimal investment of time and money.

As with many of “my” plans, I thought I was stocking up for one particular reason, but God showed me multiple reasons to do so. First of all, the Bible tells us to plan ahead for future needs. Many people do not plan ahead, and they must resort to the use of credit cards when an emergency happens, which can hurt an already-strained budget.  The Proverbs 31 woman makes sure that the items her family will need are gathered and stocked before the need arises. She is not afraid of what the future holds and can minister to others.

Second, when we purchase items before we need them and at the most inexpensive price possible, we free up our money for other purposes: higher utility bills, charitable giving, paying down debts, investing, or saving for larger purchases. Though we live on a very limited income, since I started couponing, we have been able to pay some debts and get our finances on a more solid footing.

Third, the Bible also tells us in Matthew 5:42, “Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.” If we are not careful with our resources, we will not have anything to give. When we have plenty, we are able to help meet the needs of people who are in need. Meeting a person’s physical needs shows them that we care about them, and they are then more receptive to hearing about the gospel. This past winter several families that we know were struggling and shared their needs with us. It was a blessing to be able to go into my “store” and send bags of groceries, toiletries, and pet food to help them through a tough time.

Fourth, when my pantry and cabinets are full, I am ready to receive visitors at any time. I can confidently say to my family members, “Sure, bring your friend to stay for the weekend.” If someone realizes that they have forgotten to bring a toothbrush or shampoo, I have extras on hand. We can enjoy each other’s company instead of running to a store to purchase the forgotten toiletry.

The results of couponing have greatly enhanced my opportunity and ability to be hospitable and generous. I am less reticent about inviting people to stay for a meal, a night, or a weekend—because I know that I am prepared. In seeking to be a better manager of the finances we have available, I have also become a better host to my guests. I have been blessed beyond any expectations I had at the beginning of my coupon “experiment” back in the summer of 2011. I encourage you to try semi-extreme couponing and see what effect it has on your hospitality.

Holly Williams Urbach has homeschooled her children since 1993. She has been married to her husband Joe since 1985 and is also a mother of five and grandmother of two. Holly currently works as an on-site director for a home school academy and in property management while completing homeschooling with her youngest two sons, both of whom will be graduating by May 2013. In her spare time Holly enjoys writing, gardening, physical fitness activities, and interior decorating.

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One at a time our little ones crawl into our bed in the middle of the night for warm snuggles, entangling us together. Therefore, it takes some complicated maneuvering to slip free without rousing the whole bunch.

Our goal is to get out the door without waking anyone under ten. The sandman glues our teen’s eyes shut and skips our young ones altogether, so we whisper and move with hushed caution.

And make our escape . . . out the door for hours . . . together . . . alone.

My husband and I have been dating on Saturday mornings for years. It is the time we come together and listen to each other. We tell stories, make plans, reconnect, drink coffee, and keep the fires burning. We fight the Enemy, who would love to destroy our marriage, by dating regularly, deliberately, and intentionally.

Our kids take up most of our time, energy, and money, but that does not mean that our relationship as husband and wife is less important than our parental roles. In fact, maintaining a vibrant, healthy, happy marriage is key to raising whole, stable, well-rounded children.

There are a million reasons not to date your spouse regularly, especially when homeschooling is thrown into the mix of responsibilities, but the few good reasons trump all other excuses. Your marriage is important. Your kids need you and your honey to love each other. They need you to set the example for them. A vibrant marriage is a part of mature, intelligent, intentional parenting.

When you and your spouse date is up to you. We chose Saturday mornings for several reasons:

1. Saturday mornings are less hectic than Friday nights.
2. Popular restaurants offer a quiet atmosphere in the mornings.
3. Kids are too tired to get into much trouble at home on Saturday mornings.
4. It is a good time to chat with the spouse, because phones are not ringing yet.
5. The world is still.

My honey and I hope to set a good example for our kids. Our little people know where we are hiding when they wake on Saturday mornings, and I believe it comforts them to know that Mommy and Daddy enjoy each other so often.

Make a happy marriage your priority this school year, and be amazed at the improvement in your kids’ schoolwork.

The post Keep the Fires Burning appeared first on Texas Home School Coalition.

“Good morning. May I sit here?”

“Absolutely.”

The elderly woman dusted off the wooden seat beside her.

“You know, I used to chase little boys around too. My boys are now men and are doing what they have always dreamed about. My oldest is a preacher in a little country church in Kentucky. My middle son is a Marine and has been in Iraq since February, and my youngest is a high school teacher and chases little ones all day long.

“I often wonder which of my boys has the toughest challenge. Which one will look back on his life and say, ‘I did just what I set out to do. I contributed to my country, made it stronger in the process, and still proclaimed the word of God’?”

Just as the young woman mentioned above, I, too, am a mother of three boys. Although they are not yet adults, I do still wonder what I am doing in their lives to instill pride in their nation, an understanding of war and sadness, and—most of all—the difference between government decisions and godly ones.

Parents today are surrounded by challenges to our children’s Christian upbringing. Many of these challenges we can choose to deal with or just ignore. One challenge from which we cannot turn is defining the difference between government decisions and moral ones. For Christians, the issues of same sex marriage, abortion, prayer in school, and the removal of the word of God from the public square are not in question. We are either for them or against them, based on what we believe to be biblically true. Less cut and dried is the teaching of our precious children to respect our nation and its leaders, support our troops, and follow the laws we are required as citizens to follow.

With my three boys, I often find myself taking advantage of situations that arise to explain as much about our government as I can. This is sometimes done on a serious note and sometimes not. When President Bush was in office, a brown-eyed boy asked why President Bush was “preaching on so many channels.” It was a perfect opportunity to explain what the “State of the Union Address” is and why we have it. Another time, our then seven-year-old did not understand why our neighbor did not start his class in the morning with prayer. I explained that we are allowed to pray before class because we homeschool, and we are not required to follow the rules concerning prayer in public school.

When issues arise concerning our soldiers and the role they play in countries far away, I find it is always good to discuss the positive and negative aspects of war. One of the difficulties of parenting is understanding that no matter how hard we try to shelter our children from the sadness of death and the fright of war, they will be aware of the actions taken by our country and will be looking to us for reassurance and, most of all, knowledge of the facts.

There are many ways to help children understand our government and how it is possible to combine issues of morality with political correctness and still act as a strong American. Take your daughter with you to the polling booth. Explain why we vote and the different types of governments that exist in the world. Read the U.S. Constitution with your son, and talk about what each line means. Discuss morality and prejudice with your kids, not only from a biblical standpoint but also from the view of an elected government official. The best strategy is open, honest discussion with children. Most of all, know the people you are electing into office. Take the time to look into the ways our judges, governors, and elected officials in Congress and the Senate have voted on important issues affecting Christians. That way you will be able to make informed choices when local, state, and national election times come, both on a national and a local level.

What will the future hold for my boys? Where will they be when they are grown? Kansas? Iraq? Teaching high school students? I can only hope that they will be proud of what they are doing, making a difference in the lives of those they touch, having pride in their lives, their country, their God.

We are not only raising our children to be strong, proud Americans; we are raising godly ones.

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