Teaching your kids to enjoy life-Priority and Privilege

There is such a beauty in the gift of being able to home school. You have a great opportunity to cultivate deeper relationships with your children than you would if they were off under the care of the public school system for the bulk of the day. This is a special reason we choose homeschooling. Through each subject taught and every moment enjoyed together, there are moments that we can make it count. Every day through teaching my children, I shape the way they see the world around them. Whenever I feel like I am not doing enough to “change the world” for the better, I remember that I am building up and training a generation of young men and through my influence and teaching, I hope that they will be changing the world to the glory of God.

One important thing I make sure never to neglect to teach, is teaching them to enjoy this life that God has given them. I want them to never take for granted, the beautiful things in this life, like a beautiful sunrise or sunset, the sound of the rain falling, the big round moon and all its changes, how the trees seem to have hands raised up to heaven, the lovely sound of the birds singing their morning song and the crickets singing a lullaby. It is so important that they are aware of these beautiful things in a fallen world that threatens to drown out the beauty with all of its seemingly inescapable noise.

I make sure that as we go about our day, I do not neglect to point these things out. It shapes the way they see things, when my 5 yr old exclaims with great joy, “Mommy! Look at the beautiful sky God painted for us!” or when my 3 year old, who incidently is supposed to be sleeping, but is instead staring out his window at the moon, comes to get me urging me to come and look at the big round circle in the sky, “The moon, the moon, what color is it mommy?” It happened to be yellow this particular night. “we have to wake up Joshua, he needs to see the pretty moon.”  afterwards praying, "Thank you God for the stars and moon in the sky." 

I love to take these moments and make them personal, I believe it is important to bring life into the classroom, and take thier learning to another level through hands on activities. For example, since John Carlos was so fascinated by the moon, the next day we did a learning activity about the phases of the moon, where we scratched them into the cream of an oreo cookie. (see previous post moons over my oreo in the food for thought series) Since Joshua had been so amazed by the beautiful sunset, we made our own finger paint and painted sunsets with them.

Today, we are going to just go and enjoy Gods creation by being out doors in the beautiful places, observing and taking it all in. Who knows what kind of teachable moments will come out of our time together, there are always teachable moments, you need to be aware of them, and never let them pass. Being together, enjoying life, it’s such a privilege of homeschooling.