I am teaching Bible by using the layout/format in the NP Reading Curr. Guide. They have it broken down into 4 headings to coincide with 4 quarters in the year. I’ve gotten behind and I’ve given up keeping up with their schedule but I press on b/c we have been enjoying our study, at our pace, in our own wayt!!

1. The Immediacy of Christ
2. The Old Testament History
3. The Wisdom Lit and Prophets
4. New Testament History

Under THE IMMEDIACY OF CHRIST

I have chosen the following to teach for our first quarter:

• Prophecies of Jesus birth
• Birth of Christ and childhood
• Death and Resurrection
• Christ’s example of self-gov’t in being obedient to parents, His temptation and triumph, obedient all the way to death
• crucifiction and ascension/How He brough salvation

Now for resources I’ve chosen to use the coloring/activity sheets from Calvary chapel. These serve as both Bible study pages and BAR-vocabulary from the word find…looking up scriptures for the crossword puzzle, and other supplemental independent and oral reading for my 8yo. The principle we reasoned to when we studied the prophecies of HIs birth was GOD PROMISED TO DELIVER MAN FROM SIN. We started with Isaiah 9:1-7(from the Calvary chapel activity sheets) and talked about the state of man according to what Isaiah 9:1-7 stated. I asked many WHY questions and then asked the same questions another way just to ensure they understood why God sent a deliverer. This was a most blessed time. I could see in my dc’s faces that their hearts had been touched by the fact that Jesus took their punishment. He didn’t deserve it and He did nothing wrong but He loved them so much that He took their punishment…that we were the ones born into sin and Jesus became that sin for us. How wonderful it was even for me to remind myself of this. Then we went to Isaiah 53:2-12 and reasoned to the same principle that this was God giving a message to his special servant, the prophet Isaiah about His promise to send a Savior.

Our next series of lessons Gabriel visits Mary(Luke 1:26-38 and other referrin scriptures) and The Birth of Jesus(Luke 2:1-7) all reasoned to the principle that GOD IS A PROMISE-KEEPER; GOD KEPT HIS PROMISE TO SEND A SAVIOR TO MANKIND….(and if God kept His promise back then then surely He will keep His promises to us) as we witnessed the evidence of the Savior being born thru the scriptures.

Much of what we talked about in our lessons God gave me on the spot or the morning of the lesson. I did not plan on teaching these principles..they came as I kept looking over my lessons and even in the midst of teaching some of them a principle would pop into my mind and then I’d steer the lesson for us to reason along those line. My lessons were all nicely laid out but I’m learning to stay loose and I have to keep in mind that this is God’s lesson not mine. I am supposed to be allowing HIM to teach not me. So I find I get less and less upset when my schedule/lesson does not go as I plan and many, many times I feel somewhat uncomfortable with a lesson I have written and instead of just forging ahead like I used to do, I am learning that that is God gently nudging me and so then I have to stop and listen and pray. I’m learning as I stay humble and sensitive to Him many times He will change my lessons, give me principles I had not thought of and the lesson goes so wonderfully…..wonderfully b/c then I know I’m in His will with these lessons.

I also try to think of these principles as TRUTHS… I ask the Lord what TRUTH about Him should I be teaching my dc in this particular lesson.

A change has taken place in my thinking, my heart, and in therefore, my actions or my implementation of how we homeschool.

As I was being refreshed and renewed, I didn’t know it at the time, but God was kind of ‘weaning’ me from all that I had read about what others were doing in their homeschool, even from the much of the material I was studying in the Red Books and the NP lesson plans book. All of a sudden I didn’t have a ‘taste’ for any of it and I began to wonder if I was on the right track with the BPA. I even wondered if I should still be homeschooling…but I’ve learned never to make a major decision when emotions are running high and even when I’m experiencing much uncertainty…the answer will come in the calm…I just continued to wait on the Lord, enjoying my rest in not having to do school just enjoy my family and children.

But I had come to the point where I’m tired of doing things my way or in my own wisdom/thinking. I’ve said that before and even when I thought I was doing what the Lord wanted me to do I realize now that I was not. I received very clear instruction from the Lord to go back to doing certain things that I used to do(when homeschooling was a pure joy!!) when my dd was 5(and when I didn’t have to report to the school district). Once she turned 6 and I had to start sending in everything we were doing a war ensued inside of me-wanting to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading but yet somehow feeling like I needed to cater to the districts and always being more concerned with what they’ll think; and the school district’s/worlds expectations won out…and that burned me out.

So God put me in a place where all of those distractions that used to pull at me were non-existent, flushed my insides out from the ‘old wine’ so that He could put in the ‘new wine’ of His revelation/instruction.

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So I’ve returned to using scripture as copywork for our handwriting lessons. That will coincide with our Bible Study.

I’ve decided to accept the fact that I cannot do all the subjects that I had planned in one day…. Now, we do what we can each day (along with my other responsibilities). The way it has been going since we started back last week, we either do ’skills’ lessons(math, handwriting, grammar, spelling, etc) or our unit study…and I’m even praying about if and/or how to incorporate our ’skills’ lessons into our unit study lessons.

I also count time the children spend cleaning their rooms/household chores as school. It goes under life skills.

I’ve gone back to using math add-ons/games on the internet to be a part of my dd’s math curriculum.

In short, I’ve eased up on myself and my children…My lessons have gone back to ’simple’(no less effective, I pray :). I’m learning how to be much more loving to them no matter how far behind I feel we are and basically to accept and be content with where they are in their development and not PUSH them to where I feel their public/private school counterparts are…even the lessons given in the NP are very aggressive and complete and are WONDERFUL in my eyes…I would want my children to attain to ALL of what I read in these lesson plan books but I’ve had to just stop striving to MAKE my children be…rather I’m learning to just LET them be…while teaching and guiding them gently.

I tell you things go sooooo much smoothly. We go to bed now happy with each other and so much less tension in the house since our days are not spent arguing and me fussing and upset and tense and feeling like I’ve failed if we don’t do have a math lesson everyday…so what if we don’t finish the book.

I’m learning to REALLY put my trust in the Lord and in following His way and instruction. My children are fine and will get to where they are supposed to be…God will make sure of that!!! The scripture God brought back to me is this:

Matthew 11:27-31(amplified)

28Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ^[f]ease and relieve and ^[g]refresh ^[h]your souls.]

29Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest (^[i]relief and ease and refreshment and ^[j]recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls.^(A)

30For My yoke is wholesome (useful, ^[k]good–not harsh, hard, sharp, or pressing, but comfortable, gracious, and pleasant), and My burden is light and easy to be borne.

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So having said all of that this week we started His Story again and picked up with the 3rd link Jesus Christ-The focal point of History. That was our principle.

For BIBLE/HISTORY I read to my children the bible stories of Jesus getting baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus and the little children, and Jesus choosing 12 disciples. I gave them bible sheets, from Heart of Wisdom site to color as I read these stories. In all of this we would discuss and reason Jesus’ purpose (Principle of Individuality) for coming and referencing that to the Chain of Christianity in showing what God was doing/how His plan was unfolding to bring liberty to America and the world from the beginning…Creation.

It was such a simple lesson, if I wasn’t trusting God with my homeschool I would wonder if my children learned anything from something so simple..I trust that what I shared in this unit that God would put His Super to my natural and bring something Supernatural out of it in the lives of my children.

Today we read about the Last Supper, Jesus’ Resurrection, and His Soon Return.

For GEOGRAPHY we looked at and studied maps of Israel and the Middle East Region. My dd had to locate the nation of Israel first She labeled a blank outline map of Israel. She labeled Jerusalem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan River and the surrounding nations of Syria, Jordan, Egypt and the Med. sea. These are some of the sites we visited and used in our study
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/asia/lgcolor/ilcolor.htm

http://www.freeworldmaps.net/asia/israel/map.html

http://www.masada2000.org/geography.html

This next site is a WONDERFUL site. You can download interactive maps and map puzzles where your child has to put each state in it’s place(for US map) or each country in it’s respective place on the continent. When we did our Moses link my dd fell in love with this and kept asking (on non-History unit days) if she could do the map puzzle of Africa!

http://www.yourchildlearns.com/megamaps.htm

Now, on to ART. I decided to study/introduce my children to the painting of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci since we read about the Last Supper today.

I found a printable here at this site:

http://arthistory.about.com/library/artists/tours/leonardo/n_leo_10.htm

I read a very short biography of Leonardo and gave my dd the printable of his painting and asked her to study it and reproduce it. This is what she did…I thought it was precious so I decided to post it….

I also found more art history at this site…

http://arthistory.about.com/cs/leonardo/a/last_supper.htm

I found these search engines just for kids…

AJKids - AOL@school - Awesome Library - Google - KartOO - KidsClick! - ThinkQuest Library - Yahooligans

I clicked on AJKids and found the following site that gives a biography of Leonardo in simpler language for younger children.

http://www.askforkids.com/fr?u=http%3A%2F%2Flibrary.thinkquest.org%2F3044%2Fnov_over.html&bu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.askforkids.com%2Fweb%3Fq%3D%22da%2Bvinci%2C%2Bleonardo%22%26dm%3Dlang%26page%3D1&q=%22da%2Bvinci%2C%2Bleonardo%22&o=0&l=dir&s=k&dm=lang&qt=0

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So all in all, things are going well…I’m happy and my children are responding so much better to school and just overall. My 5yob can’t seem to stop hugging me and coming up to me laying on my shoulder and he keeps telling me, “Mommy, I love you”. I tell I love him too and I stand in awe at what God is doing in my life and in my family as I determine to trust Him and go with His leading for everyday.

The last few days, that I have not blogged about our educational activities, we have had some wonderful moments…at least for me…I think for my dc as well. As far as our daily schedule it does not look at all the same as what I posted our schedule would be…although I do use it to make sure we get done all that I have planned for each day; although that changes slightly, too. Overall though we’ve been getting thru our core studies and doing some sort/form of history or science. On Wed. we started at 11:30 and did not finish until 7:00pm. That day I had to keep giving them breaks b/c of the things I needed to finish(like cooking, laundry etc.), so we did not go straight thru from 11-7…we took many breaks in between and when it was time to come back to our lessons we would(cheerfully I might add) and most nights right before bedtime dd completed her homework assignments. Most of the time her assignments include completing a math homework assignment, handwriting, reading a book(or 2 as she desires and most of the time she wants to read more…I think to keep from going to bed:) ), doing a page in her grammar book and on days we did history unit - literature(poetry) segment she would read poems out of the Home Book of Verse for Young Folks until she got sleepy.

As far as our lessons this week in Bible Study, they have really blessed me. We are following the lessons in NP Lessons Grade 1 and this week we talked about prophets and prophecy. I spoke very strongly and reiterated and emphasized how a prophet of God will speak ONLY those words that God tells him to speak. After about 2-3 days of lessons on this I let them watch Veggie Tales JONAH. They have asked for it again and are watching it for the 2nd time this week-this is in addition to their other studies and bible for today. They gave their grandmom and grandpa an earful(as my mom told me later) about Jonah and about prophets and also about their lessons. They seemingly talked at length about what we’ve been studying.

Arithmetic has been going well. She has memorized all +1, -1, +0, -0, and doubles without counting her fingers or otherwise. These I tried to teach by ‘principle’ and reasoning that any number plus one is always the next counting number, therefore no need to count on her fingers for those. We are working on 6+6, 7+7 up to 10+10 and she shocked me by blurting out the answer to 8+8 and 9+9. We had been writing it for about 2 days and I guess she remembered it. She kept forgetting 7+7 so any of those that she forgot I would let her use the abacus and write the problem and the answer so it would ’stick’. We are also spending much time counting by 2’s and getting an understanding of skip counting. We are doing much better in identifying even and odd numbers and skip counting by evens and odds. The next topics we’ll do is +2, -2 combinations(which is skip counting forward and backward by 2’s) and doubles +1( if 7+7=14, then 8+7=15….1 more than the double 7+7)…I don’t know how well this strategy will go over but I’ll give it a whirl.

Her cursive handwriting is coming along beautifully…I’m amazed. She really likes doing this and asks me for her handwriting homework if I ‘forget’.

Phonics/Spelling we have not done yet. I’ll probably work that in next week somehow. Dd is reading on a 3rd to 4th grade level so I have not been too sure as to where to start. She reads pretty fluently but has no idea why u pronounce the word NOT with the short O sound. I have the Abeka phonics and I also have WRR. I think I’ll start off dictating the word list from section I in WRR and covering the spelling/phonics rules. I like Abeka’s approach so I’ve been trying to combine both but I keep getting bogged down in my thinking when I try to do that…so I’ll have to play it by ear.

Reading is done everyday, sometimes several times a day. I eventually want to get to the point of writing some BAR lessons(from NP Reading Guide) to insure comprehension.

Art is covered is history or science lessons or bible study. As I read the science book dd drew a flower garden on the chalkboard. Last Friday ended up being art day. I let them take their huge art pads out in the garage and paint to their hearts content. We talked briefly about primary colors.

Another blessing of a book is their science book , Dr. Hooker’s A CHILD’S BOOK OF NATURE. I still have not come up with any ‘lesson’ , per se, for this book so we just do science in ‘read-aloud’ style. Our first 2 lessons were on Flowers and Our Love For Flowers. Today was so amazing. First off my ds(5) asked could I read to them about flowers today. That was not on my scheduled plan for today but I said yes. As we read, Dr. Hooker was talking about how mostly everyone likes flowers and how we can find prints/pictures of flowers on our clothes, carpets/rugs, sheets, furniture. I decided to point out to my children that we have flowers on a table ornament in ourl living room. Well, that science session turned into a flower hunt as I continued to read and with excitement my dc skipped and jumped around the house finding flowers on our picture frames, our clothes, our sheets, our carpets, framed artwork on the wall, etc., all over the place. I could feel the Spirit of the Lord in this and in this lesson…(this book is wonderful!!!). My children were so excited(you should have seen their smiles and their eyes get big as they began to recognize what God had given us in flowers). I talked and reasoned that flowers are beautiful and they come from God therefore God is beautiful…piggybacking on our history lesson this week about how God shows us HImself thru the things He has created…we can see His beauty and love for us as we look at/for His flowers. We talked about how flowers make us feel and inquired as to why we thought God would give us flowers. DD reasoned that God gave us flowers to make us feel good(b/c when we look at flowers we feel happy and not sad), to make us happy(as they were this afternoon)

How awesome it is to let the Lord lead in how to give/teach/minister His truth(s) to these precious children.

As I closed the book(b/c that lesson was over) both of my dc said very emphatically “MOM WE WANT YOU TO READ MORE”!!!

…so I did…I was soooo inspired that I decided to take the lesson outside so we could see real flowers as we read the next lesson on sap and how the sap runs thru the stem. I wanted them to touch and see a real stem while I read how the rose bud turns into a rose b/c of the sap running thru the stem. We then answered the questions at th end of the chapter and there concluded our science for the day.

It was absolutely wonderful. I thank God for being able to take and have the time to explore His wonderful world with my children by my side as we both learn to observe closely and appreciate God and all that He has done/provided for us.

I was so excited and blessed by our lesson this morning I posted about it as soon as we were done with that segment of our studies. Now I guess I need to complete the day.

After swim break(physical ed), and lunch we continued our lessons:

Bible(from NPL Grade 1):
Principle: Jesus is the promised Savior
Leading Idea: Jesus’ brith, death, and resurrection was foretold 400 years before He was born

Scripture reference: Is 9:6, Deut 18:18-22, Acts 13, 15, 21

This lesson was a beautiful one(all because I love talking about and sharing about the God I love and serve!!) Our discussion focused mainly on what a prophet is, what he does, whose he is, and what words he is supposed to speak. I had a poster of The Books of the Bible divided into Old and New Test. and then further divisions in the Old of The Law, History, Wisdom, Prophets….we lingered on this one. We spent a good 20-30 minutes (if not more) on this lesson. The children were engaged and I had their attention…there was no wandering of the thoughts. They asked questions and I answered and then we read more scriptures. We(dd read 1 page for her oral reading practice and I read the other) read in our Children’s Book of the Bible 2 pages on The Power of the Prophets.

She will read in her primary bible reader(from Abeka) p. 101-104 on the birth of the Savior.

Handwriting(cursive)- I “lightly” touched on:
Principle: Obedience or Self-Government
Leading Question: Why is it important to write neatly and clearly?
(No scripture reference today-we discussed last week Ex. 24:4-the biblical origin)

DD reasoned that we need to write neatly and do our best in our handwriting so that others will be able to read what we write.

She completed her handwriting lesson for the day…lower case o and connecting t,e,a,o, and u together.

Literature:
I introduced the Bible as Literature…it was a very ‘light’ overview(as I need to understand more myself to present it better)

We began our poetry reading today. We recited together A Thank You Prayer…author unknown.

She’ll read more poetry of her choice (during her independent reading time tonight) from these resources I got from the library..

The Home Book of Verse for Young Folks.- This is a wonderful book. It was recommended in the NP Lit Guide. I wish I could keep this(I guess I”ll have to buy it) b/c we’ll never go thru all of this in the time I have it from the library. It has the poetry arranged in categories such as poems about:

• In The Nursery
• The Duty of Children
• Rhymes of Childhood
• Just Nonsense
• Fairyland
• The Glad Evangel
• This Wonderful World-I’m pulling poems from this category to go with our ‘creation’ theme
• Stories in Rhyme
• My Country(poems of American history)
• The Happy Warrior
• Life Lessons
• A Garland of Gold

This is a keeper.

Another one I found in the library is:
The Oxford Book of Christian Verse
and
The Family Book of Verse

Both of these are good too.

So for homework later she’ll do arithmetic seatwork, handwriting, independent reading(in bible and poetry),

It was a good day. Although we did not do phonics, language, or spelling today I feel like we did a lot. It seemed like it took us forever to get done…we started about 11:30 and finished at about 5:00pm.

I’m pleased with our progress, nonetheless!!!!

It seems like it has been an eternity since I have been able to post anything. I”ve been so busy and every time we finish with our lessons and I think I have 15min. to myself the baby is pulling at me wanting to be rocked/held or someone is hungry b/c it is lunchtime or I something else more pressing needs to be tended to, like the house/dishes or I’m pouring over my lesson plans and praying/deciding how to ‘tweek’ them so as to meet the needs of my children and to insure ‘understanding’/teaching them so that they learn to reason. So I’m finally here at my blog and I will attempt to chronicle the last several days. I’ve been remiss at putting down what happened each day and now I don’t remember all that was done but I can give a ‘general’ picture of how our days went.

Last Friday was ‘Park Day’! We met another homeschool mom at the park with her dd and the children enjoyed the park.

This past Monday was the start of our ‘academia’ studies - we started with Bible Study and Arithmetic and Handwriting(Beginning Cursive). I figured those are THE most important right now so we do those FIRST. Somewhere in day I also go over their memory verse. DH gave them a memory verse on Sunday during our family worship and it is Heb. 11:1 from the Kid’s NIrV bible.

Bible Study

I’m using the NP Lessons for Grade 1(even though my dd is 2nd grade). I’m substituting other reading material for the Bible As Reader program. This week we are discussing and reviewing the principle that The Bible is God’s inspired Word…that men did not write the bible but God spoke to men on this earth and gave them the words to write. For dd’s oral reading (Bible As Reader) we read from The Children’s Book of The Bible. We are reading from the section HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO BE.

On Monday we discussed 2 Tim 3:16 and the purpose of the bible/scripture and the origin of the bible. I had dd draw her own original picture to make a divider page for Bible Study for her notebook.

Then we covered Arithmetic.
I”m using Abeka Grade 2 and I’ve been kind of agonizing over how to incorporate the content in the is workbook with how Ray’s teaches along with how GACE has laid out the arithmetic course…sounds crazy I know!! Anyway, I’ve decided to go with GACE’s layout(which is how I’ve written my arithmetic course content anyway and just use the workbook pages to reinforce what we do in Arithmetic lesson time.

On Monday, we started with oral counting by 1’s, 5,’s, and 10’s and did oral drill on addition combos. adding/subtr 0, adding /subtr 1. She completed the page in her Abeka text to ‘reinforce’(hopefully) what we did in our lessons.

I don’t remember if I read-aloud to them or not on Monday. Somewhere in here I don’t remember if it was after lessons or not I managed to have them clean their rooms and also take my Kindergartener thru some beginning phonics. All of this took us from 11:00 am - 2:00pm. I don’t know why it took us so long to do 2 subjects!! but it has been getting better with each day, I’m pleased to say.

After lessons and blessing their rooms (by freeing it from clutter) they were able to go out and swim in the pool(physical edu) and then we ate lunch. The rest of the day was spent by me reading thru my lesson guides to prepare for the next day.

Sometime in this day we practiced lower case e in our cursive handwriting.

Tuesday

Tuesday we covered:

We actually did Arithmetic first:
oral(and written) counting by 1’s, 5 and 10
worked with money(1,5, and 10 dollar bills, and dimes, pennies, nickels)
reviewed place value
intro. even and odd/counting by 2’s
completed page in workbook

We discussed Gen 1:5 - that (Arithmetic) Counting was established by God. She drew and colored her own original picture for her Arithmetic divider in her notebook

Bible - Principle: The Bible is God’s inspired Word
we read more from CBOB about HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO BE.

Literacy - discussed the purpose of being able to read, write, speak,(spelling and grammar) and the biblical origins of each
Ex 24:7 - Reading
Gen 1:1-3 - Speaking
Writing - Ex 24:4

DD reasoned that one (the most important) purpose of being able to read and write, spell and speak clearly and to have command of the English language is to understand God’s will, which is HIs word, to obey His Word and to be able to read the bible to others(from Ex 24:7)

Handwriting- lower case cursive i and t

Grammar - She did the page in her grammar book…This grammar is very weak in biblical foundation but I’ll have to add that when I get the time to study up on it. Right now I just need this workbook to cover the elements of grammar and to keep me on track.

After lessons they managed their ‘government’ of their rooms, ate lunch and we spent about 1 hour reading aloud an assortment of story(picture books). I’m noticing dd is reading more on her own…she had slacked off reading by herself..along with me slacking off in our read aloud time. I’m finding that as I have started reading aloud again she has taken off in her reading on her own again. She read 2 books on her own after I finished reading aloud and at night right before bed I told her to pick 2 more books to do her independent reading along with her bible before bed. She did with not complaints. Yea!!

We started at 10:30am and was done by 2:30

Wednesday(today)

Bible - same principle; discussed/reviewed divisions of the bible(Old/New Testament), read another section on How the BIBLE CAME TO BE called Writing the Law…this went into how Moses first wrote the law. This coincides so well with the COC which I have not even gotten to teaching yet!!!!!!!! My late mornings are sooooo busy and we spend like 3-4 hours getting our core subjects done along with read aloud and chores that we are ‘done for’ after lunch!!

Arithmetic
Handwriting
Phonics
Read Aloud/Oral Reading

We started at about 10:30 today and got done by 12:30…so we are getting the hang of our schedule.

Still no history units or science got done today. I think I’ll start next week with those.. This week we are just trying to get adjusted to our new schedule and get into a ‘groove’.

Also, she has homework or seatwork as Abeka calls it. I assign homework in the evenings after dinner and her bath. While she does her independent work(that reviews the days’ lesson) I can give the other two baths and put them to bed. Then she’s free to do her independent reading.

In between bible and arithmetic she gets a little break…either clean her room if not done before lessons or occupy the baby(play with him) while I work with my Kindergartener. In just the few days of school he is able to read words like at, it, mat, bat, mit(no extra t yet), sit, pit. Today we started with short e sound. We sing the song Be My Echo to the tune of Are You Sleeping? That has really helped him remember the vowel/letter sounds.

Things are going well. I MUST go now. It took me about 2 hours just to type this with the baby pulling at me, refereeing candy distribution, changing pamper, etc. Now the baby is sleep and I’ve gotta go get dinner done.

Until later!!!

One of the rudiments(foundation) of the BPA is the 7 Principles of America’s Christian History and Government. I have been stumped by this for some time and I decided that the best way for me to understand the implications of these principles is to find these principles in the Bible…more specifically in the life of Jesus. Since Jesus is our example I can then more easily relate these principles to my own life (and my dc) and then we can begin to internalize these principles and hopefully it will be easier to see them in other areas of life(externally)…even America’s Christian History and Government … if it should come to that.

I’ve often wondered what is the benefit for my children to be able to identify these principles in the life of the founding fathers b/c I don’t use them as my example. Jesus is my example. I just feel safer starting with studying the life of Jesus and then relating it to our own life.

I’ve become free enough to implement this in our home mainly from talking and reading Lisa’s experience over at Me and My House. This was rolling around in me for some time, even BEFORE I read Lisa’s blog, so when I read about how Lisa ‘renamed’ the principles and related them to other areas outside of America’s Christian History and Gov’t. I knew that is what God was showing me to do in this following study.

Again, the major goal is to apply the 7 Principles of Christian Life(as I call them right now) to our own personal life(internal) and then observe/apply to other areas(external) of life-church/community, civil/local government

Under each principle I have listed one(or two) underlying principles realizing that MANY, MANY lessons will come from each of these. The way I see it, a study of these 7 principles is a lifelong study. This ‘framework’, if you will, serves to help me categorize, organize, and write lessons specific to my children’s lives(and my own) at the place where they are in God and where they need to go in God, first, then allowing God to bring them into His perfect will for their contribution to society.

I plan on making this a part of our Bible Study time; actually when you make God’s Word and Truth the FOUNDATION of every subject, ’school ‘ becomes one great big BIBLE STUDY!!!

1. GOD’S PRINCIPLE OF INDIVIDUALITY - To understand the individuality of Jesus and HIs purpose for coming to earth.

• To understand our own individuality and our purpose on this earth

2. PRINCIPLE OF OBEDIENCE - To learn that the Holy Spirit was given to be our internal ‘governor’…that we are to be governed by God within us and by His Word that has been ‘written’ on the tablets of our heart.


3. CHRISTIAN CHARACTER - To learn that Jesus came to allow us to partake of HIs nature so that we will show Christ to the world by our Christian character and lifestyle.

4. PRINCIPLE OF STEWARDSHIP - To learn that God has given us ‘property’ to steward-our conscience being one of the most valuable…that we are to listen and be guided by our sense of right and wrong(which is governed by the Holy Spirit) in our dealings in life

5. PRINCIPLE OF LOVE - To learn that our allegiance is to God first(internal), then to our neighbor(external)

6. (DON’T HAVE A NAME FOR THIS ONE YET THAT DESCRIBES HOW I SEE THIS) To learn that as our ‘internal government’ (decisions/commitments of our hearts) are submitted to God it will affect our surrounding communities(external)

7. CHRISTIAN UNION - To learn that the prior 6 principles find their outward expression by coming together witH others of like character, faith, and mindset for a common purpose.