Welcome to Day 3 of my Heart of the Matter 10 Days of… Series about Teaching Values. Today’s topic focuses on one of the most important things (besides the Bible) we’ve added to our homeschooling schedule – Service Opportunities.
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge in the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Galatians 5:13-14
In our home, learning to serve plays a major role in values training. Of course, we train our children to serve one another in our home, but we’re also intentional in finding service opportunities outside the home. As soon as our children are able to take part in service activities, we get them involved! Helping to clean up after a co-op event, setting tables for a bereavement dinner at church and taking out the trash for grandma and grandpa are all simple to-do’s even for little ones.
{Serving at a local soup kitchen.}
As our kids get older, we actively seek opportunities to serve. Working at the soup kitchen, making meals for shut-ins with the youth group, and bagging groceries at the food pantry are some examples. Believe it or not, not once have my children complained about these times of work! Oh, they will complain quite often about chores around the house, school assignments, not having time to watch a favorite tv show, or how often one of them touches the other in the car!! But, there’s something magical about serving others outside the home that make us all very humble, eager and incredibly thankful for the blessing of serving others. Through these experiences, my children have also learned values such as empathy, acceptance and compassion. It’s truly beautiful to watch your children joyfully serve others.
{Making mop ponies for a children’s home for Christmas. K.E.E.P. Youth Council}
As my children have gotten older, I’ve found serving in leadership roles to promote values training just as well (in different ways) than the type of serving I was talking about above. My children (mostly my oldest – 9th grade – at this point) have been part of youth councils for various things like 4-H and the Kentucky Equine Education Project. They have attended leadership conferences for Christian youth and helped set-up our state’s annual homeschooling convention.
With each of these opportunities, I’ve watched my children mature. They’ve learned work ethic, respect, perseverance, cooperation, confidence and so much more. Not to mention, in each case they’ve made wonderful friends who share common goals.
{Bagging food at the local food pantry.}
Just where do you begin involving your children in service and leadership opportunities? Well, that answer depends very much on your child’s age and what is available in your area. I’ve created a list of ideas to get you started below.
Just for the record , I address the topics of service and leadership in my new book, Homeschooling the Gifted and Advanced Learner – Chapter 8 “What About Socialization?”, p 116! You certainly don’t need to have gifted children to participate in these wonderful experiences, though. ALL children benefit in such character building moments! What are you waiting for? Start thinking seriously about how you can incorporate more service time into your homeschool!
I’d love to hear what you’ve done in your homeschool to serve others!
Be sure to visit these sweet ladies during the 10 days adventure between November 7th-18th!
Welcome to Day 4 of my Heart of the Matter 10 Days of… Series on Teaching Values in your homeschool! Today I’ll be writing about how to build values through chores and jobs.
Chores
From the time my children can toddle, they get the pleasure of helping with chores around the house and around the farm. With every new responsibility comes wonderful new values. (Not to mention preparation for their futures!) Just some of the values I’ve seen molded in my children through chores include:
Ambition – taking the to-do’s seriously and doing them well
Commitment – knowing that chores must be done before other things
Diligence – sticking with chores even when they become frustrating
Confidence – knowing that “mom trusted me with this responsibility”
Cooperation – we often work together to accomplish various tasks
Joy – Yes, really! Not always, mind you, but there is deep joy and satisfaction in knowing a task has been completed. I bet you’ve felt joy when looking around your house after it’s had a deep cleaning, right? Same with kids!
There are OH SO MANY MORE values that could be included in this list – helpfulness, leadership, punctuality, obedience, strength, organization…
Whenever I write a post about chores, people always ask what chores my children are expected to do on a regular basis and at what age. That’s a hard question to answer because each one of my children has been ready to do different chores at different ages. So, instead of giving age-appropriate lists, I thought I’d make a chart of current chores my children are capable of.
Please note that only a few chores are ever scheduled at one time AND oftentimes the chores are supervised or the kids are the “helpers” rather than completely responsible.
Our current chore schedule looks something like this:
Every single day before breakfast ALL the kids must: make beds, brush teeth, get dressed, bring laundry to the laundry room, and straighten their rooms.
Monday-Friday everyone has an additional chore to work on at some point throughout the day. This might include straightening a closet, vacuuming under couch cushions, or weeding a flower bed. This chore rarely takes more than 15 minutes to complete.
Saturday morning is our deep cleaning time. We divvy up various chores to make sure the entire house is straightened and cleaned. If we’ve kept up with the basic chores the rest of the week, this deep cleaning usually takes less than 2 hours.
Jobs
Although we haven’t officially sent our children out into the work force, the older two have taken on various jobs for money. This summer, they mowed the neighbor’s yard once every two weeks. It was a very large yard and they used a push mower – they earned every single penny of their fee! They have also worked in the hay fields and cattle barns with their dad during the summer, and have been hired out for odd jobs by grandparents. With every new “job”, I watch the values mentioned above grow just a little more!
As a side note, I encourage my children when they come to me with a business idea. Besides being character builders, their businesses have been wonderful homeschooling activities. They have generated business concepts, created business cards, marketed themselves and earned money! With each new business, lessons are learned and the productivity gets a little better.
Chore Resources
I included these resources in my last 10 Days Series on Habit Training using the Charlotte Mason method, but I thought they might be beneficial in this post, too. I always create my own chore charts, but these would certainly save you time and effort!
School has been out since the end of April, meaning all the school-related posts that I’ll be publishing soon are way overdue. Oh well, better late than never. Our summer vacation has been nothing short of a whirlwind so far, but I wouldn’t trade the busyness with my sweet family for anything! I’ll try to post some summer fun posts once in awhile, too.
Some of you know that our co-op hosts a yearly competition expo. We love taking part and the photos below show my children’s entries this year.
Mahayla
Chocolate Cream Pie
Honey Oatmeal Yeast Bread
Acrylic Painting
Knitted Doily
Caleb
Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Acorn Forest Wood Project
Paper Craft
3-D Animal Cell
Eli
3-D Fish
Hot Rocks Painting
And my sweet parents who helped organize the art competition.
Because of our Charlotte Mason style homeschool, I’ve encouraged handicrafts such as sewing, crocheting and knitting from the very beginning. I’ve enlisted the help of a 90+ year old neighbor, a grandmother and a 4-H sewing class – for, you see, I’m not good at any of these skills!
Mahayla had a friend over not too long ago and they spent the entire afternoon designing adorable purses. What a pleasure to know the gentle encouragement handicrafting has provided not only skills, but pleasure as well.
I LOVE 4-H! We have awesome extension agents and helpers who are very serious about helping kids learn! Mahayla was able to take a sewing class this semester where they made laundry bags, pillow cases, backpacks, garment hanging bags and a roll-up for accessories. We still have one more lesson where the girls will make pajama pants, too!
Mahayla entered most of her sewing projects into the fair and won Grand Champion on two of them!
Between Mahayla and Caleb, they entered 14 different projects in the categories of sewing, homemade soap, canned veggies, beaded jewelry and art and came home with FIVE Grand Champion ribbons, 12 Blue Ribbons and 2 Red Ribbons. The Grand Champion items will go to the State Fair in August! (Caleb wanted me to insert here that his projects were only in canning, soap and art – he DID NOT make any jewelry or sew any girlie stuff.)
And together, they brought home $41 in prize money to boot!
Goat showing, well, it didn’t go quite as smoothly as planned. We were complete newbies – and everyone there knew it! Ha! From where to go and what to do, we didn’t have the first clue. Granted, after many required hours of goat and livestock classes we should’ve known what was going on, but the classes didn’t ever teach the practical side of show day. Oh well, live and learn is a saying that truly fits in this situation. We’ll know better next time. In fact, we were so lost that we completely missed showing goats during one round because we had no idea that we weren’t finished after the first showmanship round. There is apparently a showing class based on the weight of the goats that took place while our kids were screaming at the top of the ferris wheel! Oops!
Below is Mahayla with her Daddy. They were watching Caleb show goats. Caleb was able to watch a few more rounds than her, which gave him a distinct advantage in the ring. She’s busy telling her dad how ticked she is that he didn’t work his goat NEARLY as often or as hard as her, but was placing higher.
Eli was SO cute! And made everyone melt as he talked to the judge. Again, we had no idea the kids would be questioned by the judge, so that’s yet another thing we were unprepared for. But the kids held their own even under the surprise pressure.
Here’s Eli’s conversation with the judge. He didn’t skip a beat.
Judge: And what’s your name young man?
Eli: Eli
Judge: How old are you, Eli?
Eli: Two (He’s not, he’s three and a half!)
Judge: Wow! Two? (Eli shakes his head ‘yes’.) And what’s your goat’s name?
Eli: Sister, but this is my brother’s goat, Brother. (Eli’s goat had a hurt foot, so he showed Caleb’s goat, which Eli calls Brother.)
Judge: That’s a really long name! What do you like best about your goat, Eli?
Eli: When he pets me.
Judge: You like when the goat pets you? (Eli nods ‘yes’.)
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, I address the topics of service and leadership in my new book, Homeschooling the Gifted and Advanced Learner – Chapter 8 “What About Socialization?”, p 116! You certainly don’t need to have gifted children to participate in these wonderful experiences, though. ALL children benefit in such character building moments! What are you waiting for? Start thinking seriously about how you can incorporate more service time into your homeschool!
