"Parenting From the Heart" Review

Parenting From the Heart by Marilyn Boyer encourages, reassures and instructs mothers at each stage of life in a friendly, Titus 2 kind of way.  Throughout the book, I felt as if Mrs. Boyer was giving me a glimpse into her personal life as she shares what is most important to her as a wife and mom of 14 children.  She gently challenges our culture, even our Christian culture, and presents another way of viewing and living life based on solid conviction from the Bible alone.  It was encouragement for me to put back up my guard and stand firm on the things I know to be true and fight for our home and family rather than cave into the pressures of culture, tradition and man's opinion. 

Mrs. Boyer offers wisdom on a variety of topics from free time, character and chores to potty training, discipline and homeschooling.  She also follows up each topic with real-life stories and helpful ideas, tips or resources.  Her practical and relevant wisdom applies to any mother of any family size.  I only wish I had read this book sooner!

Kindle Edition:  http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-from-the-Heart-ebook/dp/B00D3VPBMA/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1373836123&sr=1-5
 
Paperback:  http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-From-Heart-Marilyn-Boyer/dp/0970877072/ref=pd_rhf_cr_p_t_2_87VS

Although I submitted the above as my "official review", I have more I'd like to add.  The Boyers run Character Concepts, a curriculum and family company centered around helping parents build strong, godly character in their children. 

I discovered Character Concepts via a google search and then had others recommend them.  I was even more excited to "buy local" as they are 20 minutes away from here!  We purchased Character Trails as a way to weave character training into our daily lives.  And, it's crazy how God is taking 12 colorful flashcards, simple yet meaty definitions to character traits and Bible verses and providing discipline and structure to our home.  The curriculum is an outline and God is filling in the rest as we seek to become more like Him!

On top of the character training, the Boyers have a strong sense of patriotism and seek to educate others on how our country was founded and the rights we need to fight for in order to remain a Christian nation.  Patriotism is something that is so lost in today's culture.  It's something that we don't talk about in our churches nor is it something we really see modeled in anyone younger than age 70 (aka those who haven't grown up in war times).

Between the things I heard at the HEAV Convention, the things I've been reading from the Boyers and then learning alongside my child about how our country was founded, I'm beginning to sense this great responsibility and even duty to understand our past so we can shape our future.  We need godly politicians and godly men and women to take the issues of today and speak God's truth to them.  We are being duped by so many even in the religious realm by the feel-good Christianity that we've lost our own voices and our own desires to stand up for what is right.  We think we are just one person, one voice, and fail to realize the impact that one voice can have.  But I want to teach my child otherwise.  I want to teach him that he has a God-given voice to use for real change and together, as a family, encourage others to find and use their voices, too.  But in order to do that, we have to know what we're talking about and what is most important!

Thankfully, God placed Character Concepts in our path to teach us our facts and our history.  We are being exposed to modern day patriots (whose foundation usually consists of solid character training) and discovering a network of Believers who seek to bring God's light and freedom to our world and to our country by taking a public stand for what is right and for the principles our country was founded upon.  I don't know what God has in store for us and what He will be teaching us in the year(s) ahead, but I'm beginning to see why homeschoolers typically have a strong sense of patriotism and I'm grateful for those who will share it with us!

For more on Character Concepts, visit their blog at http://characterconceptsblog.com.

So much for our first day plans...

We were starting our first week of school tomorrow at 9:15 a.m.  However, these colds we developed last week have turned into something more.  Mine went from strep to something else and morphed into bronchitis leaving me winded and drained.  Thankfully, my son's virus has not developed into pneumonia nor did his asthma flare up, but we had another rough night (the 7th in a row) and decided to turn our sickness into fun.  We pulled out the futon in the living room and had a "sickies only" camp out where my sleeping child tried pulling me under his head.  When he finally woke up, he looked at me surprised and confused saying, "Whoa! I thought you were a giant pillow pet!"  I can only imagine what fun he was having in his dreams to discover such a large pillow pet and the crushing disappointment to realize it was only a dream. 

Anyway, while it would be nice to start school tomorrow, I have such peace about letting our plans go!  Never dreamed I'd ever get to a point in my Type A, planner-doer life where I could let something as big as the first day of school go!  But seriously, there is no point to pushing our first day when neither of us feel like getting out of our pj's to smile for our annual first day photo or to make a special breakfast that no one is going to eat!  The thought of trying to jump into spelling words and making my child read (not his favorite) while I barely have the energy to watch a full TV show makes my head hurt.  And I must admit that the extra time to rest sounds like such a luxury! 

Sonlight Core B, Week 1

So, while I've got our dry-erase calendar all filled in with our first week's assignments, our "cheat sheets" laminated (number line, alphabet, graph paper, etc.), the brand-new folders labeled for each subject and freshly sharpened pencils ready to go for the morning, I'm thankful for the common sense, peace and flexibility to let it go another week (or even mid-week...we'll see how we're feeling)! 

Ahhhhh...the beauty of homeschooling! 

First Grade Jitters

We begin our journey into first grade on Monday!  My thoughts are a jumble as I look at our calendar and our curriculum and try to juggle the two.

As I stress over coordinating everything and leaving room for the unknown activities and last minute trips, I am reminded to take a breath--this is homeschooling!!  We don't have a set calendar nor way of doing things.  We can come and go without the confines of a school calendar.  And this year will look even more different than last year.  We've done this before and we can do it again!  We now have two years of homeschooling under our belts--one year of failure (preschool) that we really learned from and one year of success (kindergarten) that showed us that we really can do what God wants us to do so I need to leave it in His hands, not mine!  

I finally have the time (aka last-minute motivation) to sit down with my massively huge Instructor's Guide (have you ever seen a Sonlight Instructor's Guide??) and I'm overwhelmed and wondering how in the world we are going to fit everything in this year.  Then, what about adding in our art and physical education and swapping out Bible curriculum?  And how am I going to get my child to do all of this copywork and language arts when he hates to write?  How is my child going to learn these reading rules when it's like pulling teeth to get him to read (but he loves it when someone reads for him)? 

And then I begin to read the Instructor's Guide for our first History lesson and my worries fade away as God blesses me once again with answering those secret heart desires (Psalm 37:4-5) for cultivating a missional heart within my child.  "...Pray with your children for various peoples around the world.  Most weeks, we read about a specific people group, and several weeks we give an idea to stimulate your prayer times."  The Guide further goes into what missiologists do and the "THUMB" principle to help us remember the top five unreached people groups (Tribals, Hindus, Unreached/unchurched Chinese, Muslim, Buddhists).  The Usborne Peoples of the World book that had me riled up because they depicted life of other cultures in its accurate form (though viewed as complete nudity in my culture and the unclothed instantly became clothed thanks to my black sharpie) becomes a prayer guide as we explore other cultures and use it as a springboard to discover how God's Word is (or isn't) getting there, where His servants are and what we can do to reach everyone for Christ.  Missionary Stories with the Millers by M. A. Martin revisits some of the great missionaries we were introduced to last year in I Heard the Good News Today by C. Lehn.  And George Muller by J. Benge takes us to England where his prayers and faith translated into caring for orphans. 

This is the heartbeat of our family's homeschool as we lay aside some of the traditional textbooks and ways of doing school so we can learn from real men and women throughout history doing whatever God called them to do wherever He placed them.  Our history is rich with big and small people and moments that changed our world, our history and our future (take today, Independence Day, for example).  I want our family to be known as a family that serves God wherever He puts us.  I want my son to grow up as I did with the firm belief in Psalm 32:8, and that God can lead us down some pretty unbelievable paths to reach people we never even knew existed for His glory.  That is something you can't find in the traditional classroom and it leads me back to why we have chosen to homeschool.

So, while I still feel a bit overwhelmed with the technical stuff (reading, writing and arithmetic) and figuring out the best way to tackle it with my child, I find myself purely excited for the first time this summer to start first grade on Monday!

I'm thankful that God keeps bringing me back to the "why" behind homeschool.  Our motivations, reasons and convictions for choosing to homeschool refresh me and keep me committed to the task that God has placed before our family for this upcoming school year!