We’ve never had to teach our kids to like Christmas carols—they have always loved them. We love to saturate our house with music throughout the year, but during the month of December, Christmas songs fill the atmosphere. We even enjoy a lot of the secular carols that dominate the radio in December—we love rockin’ around the Christmas tree with Brenda Lee, learning what Christmas means to Stevie Wonder, and dreaming of a white Christmas with Bing Crosby. But the carols that really grab our hearts are those that celebrate the true meaning of Christmas: the birth of Christ. Several years ago we were visiting ...Read More
101 Things Your Kids Can Do to Make Money
Let's talk about about things your kids can do to make money. Our oldest son, who is 11, just started mowing lawns this year. This has created something we refer to as "entrepreneurial envy" in his younger brother, who is 6. While we don't want him to covet his brothers money, we do want him to learn the value of making money and working hard. Kids of all ages can think about ways to make money before they enter the official work-force. In fact, we're excited to encourage our kids entrepreneurial spirit. Below are 101 ideas you can look over with your kids. We hope you'll find a few winning ideas from this list of ...Read More
Homeschooling Homeschooling Philosophies and Methods: Classical Education
While there are strengths and limitations for every philosophy of education, very early in our exploration of homeschooling, we decided the classical education approach would be best for our family. It is important, of course, to be adaptable when it comes to the different learning styles of your kids. One-size-fits-all approaches don't work. However, while it is steep in ancient and medieval traditions, the classical approach is still flexible enough to meet nearly any child where he or she is. An Extremely Brief History of Classical Education The roots of classical education come from the ancient Greco-Roman ...Read More
5 Important Reasons to Educate Your Daughters
Every now and then we run into someone in the homeschooling world who believes that rigorously educating girls is a waste of time. Why educate your daughter when you believe her highest calling in life is to be a stay-at-home wife and mother? To clarify, we don't really agree with the above assumption anyway. A woman's highest aim in life is to glorify and enjoy God, regardless of her vocation or station in life. But let's just say, for the sake of argument, that you believe the best kind of life your daughter can have is married to a godly man and staying home to look after children. Let's say as your daughter ...Read More
Christmas Devotional #12: The Gift of Jesus
We've been very pleased with how this year's devotions have gone for our family. Our kids have anticipated sitting down together each day to open a token to remind them of the gifts Christ has given to us. For today's Christmas devotional we bought a new book about the Christmas story called The Nativity. This book is beautifully illustrated by J. Kirk Richards; a keepsake book that we can see reading to our kids at Christmastime for years to come. The illustrations accompany the KJV text of the Christmas story from Matthew and Luke. Bradley and Trisha enjoyed taking turns reading the book aloud to the rest of the ...Read More
Christmas Devotional #11: The Gift of Clothing
This Christmas devotional sounds as if it should have gone earlier in the series, but there's a reason for it being number 11. We really wanted to make our object lesson be new Christmas PJs for the kids, so we scheduled this one for Christmas Eve. The point of tonight's devotion was to help the kids be thankful for the way God provides us with clothing. ...Read More
Christmas Devotional #10: The Gift of the Holy Spirit
Each Christmas devotional we do is another opportunity to remind our kids of all the blessings we've been given. Tonight's devotional focused on one of God's greatest gifts: His Holy Spirit. ...Read More
Christmas Devotional #6: The Gift of Family
Tonight's devotion was all about family. For our 6th Christmas devotional we wanted to tell our kids about why God created families and help them see the blessing of being part of a family that loves them. For our object lesson/gift tonight we put together a small photo album of some of their family members—not just their immediate family, but grandparents, cousins, and some aunts and uncles they are close with. They had fun flipping through and naming all their relatives. ...Read More
