Life Changes, Homeschool Changes... Part 2 A second class homeschooler

This year we have been diligently looking for verses to help guide our family consistently closer to the Lord. One we have whole heartedly adopted is: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."James 1:27 

Accordingly, this verse guides our family toward a curriculum that does not  pollute the children with the things of the world. So we have decided to use Christian Curriculum (for over 90%) for the kids. This will assist our family in avoiding secular humanism, which is present in curriculum devoid of the presence of God. Our family has chosen not to try to add God to our curriculum but instead to use curriculum with a Christian world view. We see this as an additional opportunity to fill the minds of the children with the things of God.

"Since we have these  promises dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit perfecting holiness out of reverence for God" 2 Cor 7:1

A verse we are considering for our family's purpose statement is:

 "... train yourself to be godly." 1 Tim 4:7b

 This is a verse I am actively using to guide the curriculum choices for Rooster Hill Academy (RHA). So I want to be careful to use our time wisely and in ways that promote the development of Godly disciplines such as: Scripture reading, prayer, worship, meditation, evangelism, serving, stewardship, scripture application, fasting, silence & solitude (wish me luck on that one), journaling & learning.  I think this t least for me this is a tall order.

How in the world do you implement that?

She looks just like me!

I think we have to break the skills down and see how they promote the disciplines of godliness. So it becomes really important they know how to read well so they can Read scripture. They should have good reading comprehension so they are able understand the Bible and be able to apply scripture to the situations in their lives. At the same time we must have time for them to serve and opportunities to evangelize in order to grow them into mature disciples of Christ. Which means we must have time available outside the classroom to do these things. By meeting these goals the children should also be very well educated in secular terms.

Again, I want to emphasize:

"To God belong wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are his" Job 12:13

All I can do is obey what I know to be true.

So, this is a very long winded  way to say we are going to use text books this year. I guess I feel like I need to justify my choice. Because there just seems to be so much shame attached with the use of textbooks or if you use a work text or you use something like ACE (Accelerated Christian Education). So if you are not using a certain curriculum you a become like a second class homeschooler. To top it off I am not using the top tier Christian Homeschool Text book provider like Abeka (except for 1 class) but instead we decided to use a smaller Christian Textbook provider for most of our school books.

I am a second class homeschooler.