Elizabeth's work

This semester, I have added a new "school lesson" relating to the building the life skill of good relationships. Some of you might say that that is like the blind leading the blind, but isn't parenting a lot like that anyway? At a one day, small workshop in Wheaton, Illinois several years ago, the keynote speaker, Dr. Rob Reinow, who is pastor of Wheaton Bible Church, made a comment that has really influenced my approach to homeschooling: "Our most important job is to disciple our kids because no one ever got divorced because they failed in math." Another inspiration came from Respectful Kids, which talked about the importance of coaching good behavior at times other than in the midst of bad behavior and of course, modeling good behavior, which is SO-O-O-O difficult under stress. Since the Bible has a lot of great things to say about relationships, we are using it as a primary source. We started out talking about what our primary jobs as human beings are. According to Matthew 22: 37-40, Jesus said that it is" 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: `Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

But love is a very general term, with a lot of different connotations, so now we are focusing our time on 1 Corinthians 13, also known as "The Love Chapter". We spent two weeks on "Love is Patient", because we all need more patience. We watched "Abe and the Amazing Promise", which had a lot of fun with confusing the word "patients" with "patience". We looked up the definition of patience and we practiced it. We are still practicing it, but have moved on to "Love is kind", which by the way, is still part of 1 Corinthians 13:4. This week, I had the kids start making posters to put around the family room to help us remind us to love each other. Below is Elizabeth's poster of "Patience," which, in my mind, demonstrated a lot of patience. But she also managed to include the joke about patients, too. She used templates to form the letters and the drawings and spent a lot of time coloring in the letters. My kids constantly amaze me.