by Donna | Jul 7, 2011
“You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” Deuteronomy 6:7
We really are going to move out of the “when you rise up” stage of “teaching them diligently”–honest! However, we have found that if you get the first hour or two of your day down the way you want it, you will have a much more successful day later on. Also, success in the morning motivates us to more success later in the day–success breeds success!
So, we have gone over and over the “faith in the mornings”–private devotions, listening in the mornings, family devotions and read alouds, and more.
The other area that we like to tackle following faith in the morning is character training via chores and responsibilities. We did an entire month of chores, morning routines, chore charts, and chore schedules last year, so I encourage you to go to the blogspot, look in the index under chores, and have at it.
For today, I am going to post the link for the “age appropriate chores.” Summer is the perfect time to establish new chore schedules, morning routines, and more!
Chore Resources: https://positiveparenting3-6-5.blogspot.com/2010/04/day-113-114-resources-for-chores.html
Age Appropriate Chores (starting here with littles for several days): https://positiveparenting3-6-5.blogspot.com/2010/04/day-115-age-appropriate-chores-for.html
by Donna | May 31, 2011
“You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” Deuteronomy 6:7
We have been asked frequently about the “collections” that we enjoy reading from during morning devotions, as well as other times of the day.
There are many reasons that I enjoy reading “collections” to my children:
1. The entries are usually fairly short. We can read from any one of our “collection” books in under ten minutes, for the most part. While I like to have a lengthy “morning reading” time (we sometimes call it Bible/Character/Creation Science reading) of forty-five to seventy minutes since we only do it three days a week (we only do it on my non-work {teaching writing to homeschoolers to test our books} days), with my “collections,” I know that I can just pick up two or three and be done reading in twenty to thirty minutes on rushed mornings.
2. It allows us to read about a variety of topics all at the same time. We run the gamut in any particular reading session (Bible character in “Character Sketches”; animal in “Character Sketches”; weather in “In His Hands”; godly hero in “Hero Tales” or “Cloud of Witnesses”); American history in “Patriot’s Almanac”; character story in “Great Stories Remembered II”; and much more!).
3. Each entry is self-contained. When we do ongoing stories, biographies, history text, etc., if one of my kids is gone, I feel like I can’t read those that day because someone will be missing out and will be in the dark when we have our next reading. With collections, it doesn’t matter if somebody is missing that day or we take off for five days to travel (though collections are extremely portable—see point four!). There is no “catching up.” This aspect also makes “collections” great for family read alouds, evening devotions, bedtime stories, etc. for Dad. If Dad is gone, we aren’t “reading ahead” without him; he missed an entry or two, but not part of an ongoing story, etc.
4. “Collections” make for great travel reading. If we bring two small collections, we have a variety of interesting reading at our fingertips. Thus, devotionals, story time, etc. can often be continued in some form while we are on the road. When my kids were younger, I would often keep an “Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories” book in the vehicle, so we had a variety of stories handy should we get detained for some reason. (I’m smiling fondly as I write this, remembering a couple of times in which we huddled under an overhang at a professional baseball game reading “Uncle Arthur’s” while the game was on hold for rain and while in a long line at Disney World gathered around our “Bedtime Story.”)
The next two posts will contain lists and links of the various “collections” that we have used with our kids for all types of reading. While we are still on “when you rise up,” I will include “all times of day” collections in these lists and specify how we have used them.
Also, I will break them up into two posts—one for “littles” (though my “biggies” often like these too!) and one for ages ten to twenty! Lastly, if you do not receive PP on FaceBook (by “LIKING” us), you might want to do so. I will be putting links, one at a time on that wall over several weeks. Thanks for joining us! Tell a friend about Positive Parenting!
by Donna | May 10, 2011
“You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” Deuteronomy 6:7
I am going to make a random list of things I can remember our children doing for devotions, character, discipleship, etc. I’ll try to list them in a semi-chronological order by age group. (Books that are reviewed at PP 365 blogspot are marked with asterisk.)
*Early Readers’ Bible
Bible story book and audio sets, including “Stories That Live” (not sure if those are still out there but Joshua and Kayla used to love these!); NEST; and others that I picked up at the library (those little plastic bags with book/tapes or cd’s)
*Your Story Hour audios
Doughnut Man videos
*NEST videos
Patch the Pirate audios
Felt Bible lessons
*The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes
*Uncle Arthur Bedtime Stories
*The Picture Bible
*Family Bible Library
Youth Devotional Books
Key for Kids
Bible quizzing cards
Scribing—writing out a book of the Bible in a journal
Quote-ables—writing out verses, quotations, etc. in a journal
Biographies of godly heroes
Case for….books
Case for….books for kids
Psalm a day
Proverb a day
A Gospel chapter a day
Authors our teens have read widely:
C. S. Lewis
John Piper
A. W. Tozer
Ken Ham
Genevieve Foster
Martin Luther
Amy Carmichael
Hannah Hurrnah
Joni Eareckson Tada
John Bunyan
Josh McDowell
Lee Strobel
Elisabeth Eliot
Kay Arthur
Andrew Murrey
Charles Sheldon
R.A. Torrey
Henry Morris
Gary Parker
William Durrant
Franklin Graham
David Wilkerson
by Donna | Apr 15, 2011
The link below just came through on Facebook, and I automatically started running through the many applications of it. Writing (our son is speaking about word choice today at the APACHE convention in Illinois today during his Writing With Style session!). Marriage (oh yeah). And, of course, parenting.
How many times do we say, “You always…” When we should say, “I feel like this or that happened..” How many times do we say, “Why can’t you…” When we should say, “It would be so great if you could…”
And then there’s the whole thought of hurtful words. How many times do we use hurtful words to our children instead of words of peace; words of love; words of affirmation; words of encouragement; or even words of helpful instruction?
Watch this clip with those thoughts in mind…and let’s all choose the right words today!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzgzim5m7oU&feature=player_embedded#at=97
by Donna | Mar 29, 2011
“You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” Deuteronomy 6:7
In keeping with a potential model in II Peter 1:5 as a basis for our how days would flow: “But also for this reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to your virtue, knowledge,” we started our kids’ days out with faith. This included private devotions, family devotions, read alouds, etc. through the years. Over the next couple of days I will give some ideas for this.
Today I will focus on Bible reading together in the mornings. I have expounded over the past year on much of the teaching that we received twenty-plus years ago from Gregg Harris (father of Josh Harris of “I Kissed Dating Good-Bye” and Alex and Brett Harris of “Do Hard Things”) in his “The Christian Homeschool Workshop.” One of the things that he taught us was to attach things that we want to implement in our homes to something that is already in our schedule, beginning with meal times.
We took his advice on this (and many other things) and came home and attached Bible teaching to just before breakfast—when we “rise up.” This has looked different all the time—some of the time Ray did it before work (and the kids went back to bed after he left!); some of the time I did it before breakfast; some of the time I did it during breakfast; some of the times we snuggled in my bed and read Bible and character materials before starting chores and the busy-ness of the day.
One of the downfalls of so many people out there telling us how to teach our children the Bible, how to have devotions, etc. is that it is often made to seem much more difficult than it is! (There are way more benefits, but this is definitely a downfall in our opinon.)
Tomorrow I will list many of the morning devotional ideas that we have used—some are as simple as reading a Proverb and talking!