Developing a relationship with Jesus Christ is the most important gift that I want my children to learn and receive from their experience of being homeschooled.  The different important subjects like Math, Reading, Writing and other various subjects are tools that they will need to fulfill the adventure that they will be walking out with God but the key to enjoying and experiencing the ultimate adventure is to have them develop a relationship with Jesus Christ.

I, of course, cannot make this happen in their lives.  Each of my children has their own journey to God that they get to walk out. But I do believe as parents we are called to disciple our children and encourage them in the things of God.  You are the ultimate teacher, mentor and prayer warrior for your child.  No one knows or loves your child like you do.  I believe God desires to give us creative ideas on different ways to disciple our children.

We try to have Bible time daily.  If I don’t get anything else done in homeschooling but Bible time, I have viewed my day as a success.  I used to have the kids sit and listen quietly while we read the Bible and different various character training books.  This worked but the attention span of my kids were lost quite quickly.  Out of my 5 children, I only have one kid who is an auditory learner.  He was getting the most out of our time because it was geared toward his learning style.  I needed creative ideas to reach all the kids during our Bible time.  I wanted it to be an enjoyable time for everybody and an opportunity to facilitate discussions.

I ended up making some simple changes that have helped our Bible time be more effective.  One of the fun things that my kids look forward to is “Cocoa Fridays”.  This was a really simple change but it was something the kids still enjoy today.  On Fridays, we serve hot cocoa during our Bible time.  On Friday, they will pester me, asking me if its “Cocoa Friday” time yet.  Another small change that made even a bigger impact on our Bible time was allowing the kids that wanted to, to draw or paint or color during out Bible time.  As long as they were able to still focus on the lesson, they could be creative in whatever they felt like doing.  This helped a couple of my kids actually be more focused and retain much more than they used to.  I am the type of learner that I have to listen and not do anything else during a lesson or I won’t get what the teacher is trying to teach.  I am realizing as I work with all my children, how creative God is in making all kinds of different learners and the opportunity I have as a homeschooler to teach in many different ways.  God is brilliant and He can give us all the creative ideas we will ever need to teach and encourage our children.