Christianity and Homeschooling: Making God Real for Your Home Schooled Children
By Mimi Rothschild
Perhaps the best thing for Christian, home schooled children is that biblical instruction is not regulated to 15 minutes a few times a week. Home schooled children have the opportunity to see faith all around them all the time. Home schooling parents also have the opportunity to teach lessons about God in real world settings that mean more, are more engaging, and can have more of an impact than family devotion might have. Both home schooled kids and their parents are the beneficiaries of the many opportunities to teach and be taught over the course of an average day.
Unlike traditional school, where you are separated from your children 6 to 8 hours every day, your child is near you all the time when you home school. This means that the things you do and the contributions you make to the family are more readily understood by your home schooled children. There are events that happen all the time, over the course of normal, average days, where you can demonstrate God and His commandments to your children. For example, over the course of a day, someone may call you to donate old clothes or furniture to the Salvation Army. You begin to gather old coats and ill-fitting clothes for the truck to pick up in a few days. If your child were in a traditional school, he would never have the opportunity to see you doing God's work by being generous. Since he is in home school, he sees it first hand. You can explain to your children that God has blessed you and your family so it is your responsibility to be generous to others with your time, money, and possessions.
Conversely, because you are near to your home schooled children all day, you can take the events from their every day lives to teach them how to be a better people and more pleasing to God. Say, for example, your home schooled children have been competing and the winner is being a bad sport. You can use that as an opportunity to show your home schooled children God's graciousness, humility in victory, and pride in defeat. In this way, you can apply lessons learned in devotions, church, or Sunday school to real life situations that your home schooled child will understand. Home schooling gives you and your child the opportunity to really live your faith while learning to apply religious principles to every day life.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling mother, writer, children's rights advocate, and Founder and C.E.O. of home education company Learning by Grace, Inc. She and her husband of 28 years reside with their 8 children right outside Philadelphia, PA.
Rothschild launched Learning By Grace, Inc. because she believed that our nation's public school system has failed parents and students. Learning By Grace, Inc. offers online education through a multimedia-rich curriculum to PreK-12 children across the country and throughout the world.
An accomplished author, Rothschild has written books regarding education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Homeschooling News Café Blog consists of the most current and relevant education news.Electronic reproduction of this article is permitted if content is published unchanged, appropriate credit is given, and the article title links to corresponding article webpage.
