Curriculum Planning

Okay, I am a curriculum-aholic, if there is such a thing. I love looking at curriculum in catalogs and online. I feel like a kid in a candy store when I see all those good books out there to read and use in our homeschool! If only I could justify spending all that money, I would be buying a whole lot more. For the past month or so, I have spent hours pouring over curriculum catalogs, trying to decide on the just the right thing for next year. My husband finds the magazines in the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedroom -- they are all over. And for those of you who already homeschool, you know once you get on their mailing lists, they seem to bombard you with catalogs. For a little while, I was a bit overwhelmed, both at all the good choices out there and at the various methods and approaches to the same goal. Then I realized I was making it too hard. I needed to spend less time planning and more time praying asking God to lead us along the right paths. I also read a great little book entitled, When You Rise Up: A Covenantal Approach to Homeschooling by R.C. Sproul Jr. It is worth your time to read. Not that it is great literature or has great ideas for teaching your child to read and write, but that it is a call to return to Scripture as to why we homeschool. As Christians, we are called to train up our children in God's laws, God's precepts, God's ways. If our greatest desire is for our children to know God and to understand God and glorify him according to the way HE created them, this will dictate our "curriculum" choices, but more importantly, we will come to see more and more that our whole lives are about education. If you send your child off to public school, you are sending them off to be educated by the state. But the state's job is to educate their mind. As Christian parents, we are called to educate their whole being - their body, soul, and mind. And if our "soul will last forever" as the children's catechism says, then educating their spirit should be paramount. Everything I do should be done with the aim of my children growing in their knowledge of their blessed Savior, Jesus Christ, who died and gave himself as a ransom not just for many, but for you and for me and for my children. Our desire is not for our little ones to make a perfect SAT score, nor is it so that they would simply get a good job and follow the American dream. Our goal is that our children will know God and make him known to others. We want them to be as the Bible says, "shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16) I looked up shrewd on dictionary.com. Synonyms included "quick, discerning, perceptive". In other words, we want them to be critical thinkers, examining the world around them in light of Scripture. When they watch the news, when they read books, when they talk with their friends, or make decisions on what to buy, our hope is that they make wise decisions, based on truth. It is not JUST about reading, writing, and arithmetic. This is why we don't want to simply "school at home" but instead, we "homeschool". I get a little uncomfortable when public school Moms ask me about what we are learning in our homeschool because I am a little afraid I might be thought of as somehow not qualified to do what I am doing. But this book reaffirms that I am qualified. Why? Because God saw fit to give us these 4 little blessings. And as Mr. Sproul reminds us, what he calls us to do, he equips us. He has already given us all things necessary for life and godliness. (2 Peter 1:3) When we talk to them when they rise up and along the way and when they lie down, we are homeschooling them. In the same manner as all of life can be lived in worship to God as we live Coram Deo, before the face of God, all of our family life can be considered homeschooling as we speak to our children about who God is and what He has done and as we model before them how God wants us to live, however imperfectly it is done. It is a freeing thing to know that just as God created each of our children individually, we can have a homeschool that is also just as unique as the individual personalities that make it up.

So, now you may ask, what became of all my curriculum shopping? Well, I am still working on it. But one thing has changed. My Bible and character training has moved from the bottom of the list as seemingly non-academic subjects towards being the core of all we do.

If my child can say all his multiplication tables with ease and his phonograms perfectly, but knows not the Lord, he is only a ringing noise. If he has the gift of writing and can diagram sentences perfectly but knows not the Father's love, he is nothing. If he scores perfectly on his spelling tests and can recite definitions of his pronouns, adjectives and adverbs, but demonstrates unkindness towards his siblings or disrespect towards his parents, he gains nothing.

Love is patient towards a slow child, love is kind towards a needy child. It does not envy its' friends' children. It does not boast of a child's achievements. It is not proud. It is not rude to a friend or family member, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered when a child disobeys for the 10th time, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (adapted from 1 Cor. 13)