Like my sister-in-law Rosanna shared in her post last week, I too was inspired at the Teach Them Diligently Convention this year to take a closer look at how we center our homeschooling and our family around God’s word. Equipping our children for the battle that is currently being waged in our society to draw their hearts and minds away from the authority of scripture takes more than just adding a Bible curriculum to our lesson plan.
I have tried a few different approaches to incorporating the Bible into our homeschool day:
- We have done Bible as a subject with My Father’s World.
- We have used the Bible as the starting point for our history and science study using Heart of Wisdom.
- We have done a daily family devotion before starting school using the FamilyWalk 52-Week Devotions by Bruce Wilkinson.
- And this year, we used Trail Guide to Learning’s Light for the Trail Bible study supplements to our Paths of Exploration curriculum, which in itself is centered around a Biblical worldview.
Our daughters have learned a lot of Biblical history and memorized key scripture verses along the way, and these sources have sparked great discussions about faith, the character of God, and God’s plan as revealed through history. We do plan to continue to use the Trail Guide to Learning series as our core family curriculum, however I felt pretty strongly that we needed a new plan for family Bible study.
The bases that I wanted to cover with a new family Bible study plan are:
- How can we keep the Bible at the center of our home, our family, our daily activities — and not just put into time slots for school, when Dad isn’t usually working with us?
- How can we as parents help our children develop Biblical character qualities and put Biblical principles into action in our everyday lives?
About the time that I was pondering these questions, I was given the opportunity to preview a soon-to-be-released family Bible study book, Learning to Speak Life: Fruit of the Spirit
I am excited about diving in to Learning to Speak Life: Fruit of the Spirit with my family. This fresh approach to family Bible study provides a 9-week examination of the fruit of the Spirit according to Galatians 5:22-23, using many creative entry points and activities to make the study come to life and be immediately applicable. This book is the first in a planned series of “Learning to Speak Life” family Bible studies from the Kerchevals.
Stay tuned for an upcoming review and giveaway on July 30, 2013!
What are you planning to change in your upcoming homeschooling year? How does Bible study fit in to your plans? What advice do you have to other homeschooling moms looking for new ways to center their homeschooling agenda around God’s word?
This week NextGen Homeschool is linking up with Teach Them Diligently’s blogger link-up on changes for the 2013-14 homeschooling year. Visit the link-up for more posts on what other veteran homeschoolers are planning to change for the upcoming school year!
We’ve been homeschooling for many years – our oldest is 24 and our youngest are 8! But this year is going to be very different. I have been so inspired and challenged by so many things that I’ve been reading lately. There is no way that I can express how God is breaking and reshaping my heart for what will be happening in our school this year. I want to put God first in a new and fresh way, I want to teach our children about spiritual warfare and how real it is, I want to help them understand that their salvation is more than a ticket out of hell…I could go on and on! In the notes that I’ve been taking the first steps are writing a mission statement, speaking life into our home and (amazingly!) I want to teach about the fruits of the spirit! I am definitely interested in Carlie’s book. I am very excited about our changes, can you tell!?!