“Christian Training of Children” by Charles Spurgeon “Parents! Your children are...
Christian Training of Children
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discipleship
Fragrance of the heart of Christ
Originally found in my facebook inbox, from the group Disciple Like Jesus from J. R....
Setting Up The Schedule
Want to have a peek into one of my son’s course of study? Of course you do. 🙂 I’ve...
A New Season of Learning
Ah, a change of seasons. But no, I’m not talking about the emergence of Spring. Rather, a...
Putting it together
Where I share just a little of our lifestyle and how it looks, what sort of books we use in this pursuit of a Bible based, Cross-centric lifestyle of learning.
The Animal School – A Parable
An old story tells of the creation of a school for the animals. In this school, everybody took the...
Developing the Vision
God doesn’t want us to strive for cookie-cutter children, rather He would have us prepare our children for an individual, definable life purpose. We try to recognise and identify each children’s natural (God-given) strengths, weaknesses, abilities, talents, interests and passions. From there, we can lean on God for direction in devising a flexible plan for developing our children as whole individuals with a purpose, for His service.
Getting the direction – as co-pilot
A Gospel-driven, Cross-centric, Discipleship approach simply means that we’re teaching each child what he needs to know, with a view to his/her God given strengths, weaknesses, interest, passions, and talents… their natural bents. An individual’s strengths and weaknesses and interests are part of their God given make up! By identifying and encouraging their natural bents we will be launching them toward their purpose.
Mapping the course- as the pilot
So began a new chapter in my homeschooling journey: that of putting God first…depending solely upon Him. I wanted Him to show me what to teach and when to each child. I was literally asking ‘What would Jesus do? What would Jesus learn? How would Jesus teach?’
Something missing…
I was revising my educational philosophy, my dreams, goals and ideals for the children. But deep in my heart I knew that something was missing. Oh, we did Bible study and had memory verses and all those ‘right’ things, yet something was missing. I knew that I was doing what God wanted- after all, I was doing this for Him, for His glory! Right?
Our Story: Beginning to homeschool
When John and I were first married we hadn’t heard of home education. We knew that we wanted to have a good, solid relationship with our children and raise them in God’s ways but school was just ‘what you did’. We had goals for our family and our children. We wanted to raise godly adults using a healthy process. We wanted to develop in them a love of learning that would continue throughout their whole life. Our hearts were turned toward our children and we wanted their hearts to be turned toward us and God. The godly training of our children was a priority. We recognized that the family unit is God’s design. We wanted a close relationship with our children…we wanted to capture their heart but we didn’t know about homeschooling…
How Do We Parent?
When I see the way that God parents me I am more able to parent my children in love, in grace…with discipline as it should be – loving discipline. Discipline that restores, not tears down or breaks hearts. Every action the Father does toward me is one of restoration, although I don’t always see that at the time. But it is. That is His nature and I trust Him.