Jul
30
Giving Homeschoolers Enriching Experiences and Opportunities.
by Mimi Rothschild
What are the experiences and opportunities that really count in building Christlike character and at the same time, can serve individual personality? How can the homeschool curriculum and homeschool program provide for such experiences and opportunities?
The Christian homeschooling teacher needs not only a clear-cut purpose, but we also must know his own children very well let’s talk about how we can better understand the nature and needs of our children. Without some degree of understanding the homeschooling teacher is poorly prepared to plan opportunities for normal Christian growth, to evaluate and make use of the child’s everyday experiences in encouraging such growth and to help them to overcome the obstacles that hinder his developing Christian self.
If Christian homeschooling parents are to guide their growing children effectively, they must be prepared to think of the homeschool as a school for living. It must be more than a place where children come to listen, where the “good” children are passively quiet ones who never “do” anything. It must be thought of as a place where children can not only are help to understand Christian troops, but also may have rich experience is in living by these truths. The age old but still truthful adage reminds us that children learn to do by doing. This is as true in learning to follow Christ as it is in learning to ride a bicycle. The homeschooling parent then must not be content to merely tell her children, what is right and good to do. It must provide actual opportunities in which children can do Christian thinking and carry out Christian act’s. The homeschool then becomes a practice school in Christian living.
In working together in the homeschool group to carry out Christian purposes, children find opportunities for Christian living, for putting into practice the teachings of Christ. Forbearance, patience, forgiveness, cooperation, brotherly and yes, the sympathy, sharing, sacrificing one’s own wishes and desires for the good of others. All of these are found in their beginnings in a homeschool with the atmosphere and leadership make the development of such traits a normal experience. Their characteristic of a homeschool only when the leaders care enough to plan and prepare themselves for their work. And when they know how to work with the child’s nature and not contrary to its, when they recognize his capacities as well as his limitations. We will not talk in this series of articles only about homeschooling methods rather. We will talk about attributes in capacities which God has implanted within the child’s nature, so that he may learn and grow toward Christlike menace. We hope to help homeschooling teachers recognize and deal with some of the problems of growing children. As a result of these recent articles, it is our prayer that homeschooling teachers will be able to better evaluate their own homeschooling methods and to choose a homeschool program or homeschool curriculum which will truly help them to guide their children more effectively in their development as Christians.