Find the Best
|
| How much do I want faith to be part of my child’s home school curriculum? |
Read over these statements and ponder them. Print out this list and talk to your spouse about what you believe. Bookmark this page so you can easily come back to the resources we list here. Some statements you won't even agree with.
There is obviously some overlap in the statements, and you may agree with several of them. But this exercise is to help you decide which is best for you now. So try to see if you find yourself drawn to one statement over another. Is one statement more what you need for this season for your child?
Also, please know that I am not trying to say one of these approaches to Christian home schooling is better than another. I simply present these insights in hopes that they might help you clarify which of the many Christian home school curriculum choices might be best for you. I will also be adding to the resources listed here as I am able to update them.
Possible answers to how much to include your faith include:
- I don’t want to include “religion” as part of my child’s education. I would rather my child choose his own beliefs when he is older and mature enough to understand more. Click here for information about secular home school curriculum.
- While I don’t profess to have any faith, I don’t mind exposing my child to alternate views, and would be open to explore religious ideas together. Probably you could use either a secular home school curriculum or modify a Christian home school curriculum to fit your desires.
- Our faith is important, but I don’t necessarily agree with someone else’s interpretation of Scripture. I’d rather my spouse or I handle the Bible time ourselves. Again, you could probably use either a secular home school curriculum or modify a Christian home school curriculum to fit your needs.
- Our faith is important but we don’t feel we need to incorporate the Bible into our home school curriculum choices. We are very involved in activities at our church or talk about the Bible at other times at home, so it doesn’t matter if we choose a specifically Christian home school curriculum or not. Here, too, either a secular home schooling curriculum or a Christian home schooling curriculum could work for you.
- The role of a home school curriculum should be to offer lots of good moral nourishment and input to help my child learn from example what will be a virtuous life. We want to provide an abundance of moral examples from literature so that my child will have godly heroes to emulate. We may or may not add to this any specifically religious content and so we don't really need a specifically Christian home school curriculum. You may find Robinson Curriculum an excellent choice for you.
- A Christian education should provide a firm foundation so that our child will know what we believe. We’d like to have some sort of catechism or Christian worldview as part of our child’s home school curriculum because we think having the Bible as a specific subject will reinforce what we are trying to teach outside of school. You may find the Bible curriculum from textbooks such as would be a good fit, although I have not personally used any of these programs with my own children.
- Godly influences are important to our family and we would like to include as much Christian content in my home school curriculum as possible. Ideally, we would incorporate Bible passages into handwriting and writing, and learn about science and history from a Christian point of view. For example, for handwriting, you might find A Reason for Handwriting a good choice since it incorporates Bible passages. There are numerous science texts that are written from a Christian point of view. We currently are using Apologia Educational Ministries science materials, the elementary level books. We are liking the astronomy course very much. I know there are numerous other science materials written from a Christian perspective that I hope to list up before too long.
- We want the Bible to be the first place we look for what we study, how we study it, why we study it, and what principles will guide our understanding of what we learn about world around us. To us, education is inextricably based on the Bible. A Christian home school curriculum should help transform our whole family’s thinking and character from the inside out, and this best happens by understanding and applying the principles and wisdom found in Scripture. Materials from the Principle Approach would appeal to you. The Noah Plan or other Christian home school curriculum materials from FACE Materials (Foundation for American Christian Education)
would be a good place to start for you.
- A Christian education must not only have a Christian content, but it must also be by a method that lines up with Scriptural understanding of how children mature. Trying to force-feed facts into a child will never produce the godly fruit we want to see develop in our child. We’d rather look at the seasons of our child’s life and see what God has for him to learn at each stage. This means we need to be more flexible than some Christian home school curriculum’s predetermined scope and sequence might allow, but we feel this tailor-made approach allows the Holy Spirit to work best in our child’s life. A Lifestyle of Learning fits this approach well and I have benefited so much from reading and meditating on Marilyn Howshall’s Wisdom's Way of Learning materials.
- We believe the role of a Christian education is to help develop critical thinkers, people who are able to understand the struggles of mankind over the ages. Reading the classics and taking part of the Great Conversation are ways we can better understand Man and his relationship to God. Thus, seeing God’s hand in history and literature are especially important as we choose a Christian home school curriculum.
A classical home school curriculum such as Tapestry of Grace could be an excellent choice for you. You can browse the Tapestry of Grace's free 3-week trial "Go to Egypt" to see what they offer. There are other classical home school curriculums such as Veritas Press that many people find very helpful. - We think that a good Christian education will enable our child not only to understand what we believe, but also to understand and interact sensitively to those of other faiths. We want our child to know about other faiths, and this will be an important factor in choosing our Christian home school curriculum. This fits Sonlight Curriculum's views very well. That isn’t to say that you can’t use their materials to teach in a classical education style, though. Sonlight tends to be very easy to adapt.
Let me say again that I am not intending to pass judgment on any of the above positions of any of the Christian home school curriculum choices. We are still learning ourselves! We are all at different places in our spiritual journeys. One statement may resonate with you now, but in a year or two, you may find another Christian home school curriculum really fits your beliefs.
A helpful hint in using this information?
Allow yourself grow and change. You don’t have to have it all figured out now. Pursue what seems right to you now, but give yourself and your family the freedom to grow deeper in your spiritual journey. I’m not sure myself where we’ll end up in ten years, but I know that as long as we pray, God will guide us along the way.
Well done! As you’ve come to the end of this page, you’ve now just read (and hopefully started to think about) some of the most important information you’ll find on this website. In answering this last question about how you want to include your religion in your home school curriculum, you’re coming to grips with some very fundamental life principles. What role does your faith play in how you want to educate your child? What Scripture has God put on your heart right now as you seek to follow His will for your family and use some kind of Christian home school curriculum? And, perhaps, does God want you to involve your faith more in your lives somehow?
You may already realize that trying to find the best home school curriculum is really only a part of a larger piece of the puzzle of Life. What is success? How does your child learn and remember? What role do you as a parent play? What kinds of books do you want your child learning from? What role does religion play in our family’s life?
Finding out the answers to these questions is not a quick process, but it is very worthwhile. I would encourage you to browse our site map listing of our articles on home schooling and bookmark it to look over when you have some quite moments. If you take time to think and talk through these issues now, you will find out that you will see more joy and success not only in just your home school, but also in other major areas of your life as well. My prayer is that you truly will find much joy and success in all areas of your family’s life.
Still not sure? Not sure what you believe or how to pray? Learn more who can be your Best Advisor here.
You may also be interested in reading more on at How to Choose the Best Christian Children's Books (outside link).
Looking for something? Search for it here:
