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!

10 days of Character Studies | Confessions of a Homeschooler
10 days of Christmas Countdown Ideas | Milk & Cookies
10 days of Creative Writing | Chocolate on My Cranium
10 days of Crockpot Meals | The Happy Housewife
10 Days to a Godly Marriage | Women Living Well
10 Days of Growing Leaders | Mom’s Mustard Seeds
10 Days of Homeschooling High School | Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
10 days of I Wish I Had Known | Fruit in Season
10 days of Keeping Your Marbles | The Tie That Binds Us
10 days of Kid-friendly Food | Planner Perfect
10 Days of Language Arts Lesson Planning | Jimmie’s Collage
10 Days of Learning Apps | Daze of Adventure
10 Days of a Mason Jar Christmas | Cajun Joie de Vivre
10 Days of More JESUS in Christmas | Preschoolers and Peace
10 Days to a Peaceful Home | Raising Arrows
10 Days of Raising a Life-Long-Learner | Bright Ideas Press
10 days of Science with Math | Blog, She Wrote
10 days of Teaching Values | Our Journey Westward
10 days of Winning your Child’s Heart | I Take Joy

Related posts:

1. Teaching Values through Chores and Jobs – Day 4
2. Teaching Values {Resources} – Day10
3. Teaching Values through Discipline that Reaches the Heart – Day 5

This is some of my Jr. High Sunday School class + my husband.  They collect offering money all year long in order to “adopt” children at Christmas and shower them with gifts.  The lady you’ll see in the last photo below started this tradition when she taught the class, and they’ve been doing it now for five years!  This is a glimpse into our shopping day.  What fun!  And what a blessing it is to give to others!

Related posts:

1. Giving Thanks

This is Tony, my music minister from the church where I grew up.  Tony has always been very active in serving others in the name of Christ.  For the past 25 years, he’s worked monthly to organize food and helpers to serve the needy at the local soup kitchen.  We were blessed to help serve again this April.

The menu:

Day old pizza donated by Papa John’s

Salad

Corn

Fruit

Day old desserts donated by Kroger

After all the food has been served, we eat right alongside those we’ve just served.  It’s a humbling and honor-filled place to be.

A day of school spent serving ranks higher than any other.

Related posts:

1. The Soup Kitchen
2. Shake-n-Bake Mix and Homemade Creamed Soup

We’re very blessed to go to a church that participates in the local food pantry mission.  Once every three months, our church is on duty and asks for volunteers to donate a couple of hours to man the operation.  My children look forward to this service opportunity so much!  From filling orders to stocking shelves, I just sit back and watch as they take the reigns when needy people come for food.  What a blessing for us, as well as the people who leave knowing their families will be well fed.

Related posts:

1. Valentine’s Day Service Project
2. Keepers At Home Service Project
3. Kid’s Cookbook

The children and youth of our church prepared a lovely Valentine’s Day spaghetti dinner for the adults of the church yesterday.  They set up a very special dining experience with decorations, music, greeters, waiters and waitresses, and a yummy meal!  Here are my two servers in action.

I LOVE activities that bring all ages of the church together.  I think it’s so important to make generational connections.

Related posts:

1. Keepers At Home Service Project
2. What I’ve Learned The Third Time Around
3. Project Q & A

Related posts:

1. Shake-n-Bake Mix and Homemade Creamed Soup

Yesterday was Tuesday and that means another busy, but very rich day of learning in our house.  After a bit of Bible and math, we went outside for nature study from a distance.  Instead of observing God’s creation up-close and personal, we took time to view the beautiful autumn trees as they grow in groupings.  All the greens, yellows, organges and reds together are just breath-taking!

To record nature study today, we created sponge painted treescapes (a very easy and fun activity.)  Take a cheap sponge (I found a bag full of 15-20 sponges at the Dollar Tree the other day) and let your child cut it into various odd shaped pieces.  You’ll need a little piece per paint color.  Squirt several fall colored tempera or acrylic paints onto a “pallet”.

We started by using a few different blues and a white paint to make the sky.  Then we moved on to the ground by using a couple of greens and a gold.  Using a thin paintbrush and a couple different colors of brown, we just went along the ground/sky line painting in several tree trunks.  Then using reds, yellow, orange and the green paints, we dabbed the edges of the sponges into the colors and gently dabbed onto the paper to create leaves.  My explanation probably makes this sound harder than it was!  At any rate, the finished product was lovely.

This week started new artist and composer studies.  Keeping with the theme of Impressionistic artists, we began studying Edgar Degas.

Since Degas painted so many ballerinas, it just seemed fitting to teach Tchaikovsky at the same time.  I found a wonderful site for composers called Classics For Kids.  Where have I been, right???  We were able to listen to a couple of biographical stories about Tchaikovsky and hear some of his famous Nutcracker.

And finally, after our tea time and a history activity we headed to the first 4-H meeting of the year.  Our homeschool 4-H club is designed mostly as a service-oriented club.  The kids packed snack bags for needy children in the area, then worked on fall-themed thank you magnets for our local hospital workers.

Like I said – busy, but wonderful!

Related posts:

1. Nature in Early Fall
2. Fine Arts Tuesday Week 2
3. Fine Arts Tuesday #4

We used a Bible concordance to search for verses about food and drink relating to God and Jesus.  After deciding on four verses, they were typed up (by me) and illustrated by the children.

Next, the children each shared one to three recipes they are able to make by themselves.  Again, I typed them up and the children illustrated the recipes.

All the kids signed the final page of the book to personalize it.  And we were sure to include an invite to the various children’s programs we have at church in hopes that some of the new children (and parents) will make our church a home for themselves.  In trying to share Jesus with people in a practical and fun way, our prayer is that the children will come to know the Lord loves them and we do, too.

Related posts:

1. Kids and Money
2. Wanna See What My Kids Do For Fun?

Making the blankets is a cinch.  You take one yard of fleece and cut 4″ squares out of the corners.  Then, cut slits up 4″ about an inch apart on all sides.  Loosely tie two “slits” together in knots until you go all the way around the perimeter.  There you have it – beautiful lap robes that kids can easily do on their own.

Here’s a site I found that gives directions for making your own fleece blankets.  Have fun!

No related posts.

We decided early on that we wanted it to be hands-on, meaningful and service oriented.  Forget the meeting minutes and officers and such!  Well, we met for our first meeting this week and it exceeded every expectation I had!

The children were asked to bring ingredients to make their favorite Christmas cookie.  They each got to be “Emeril” as they demonstrated their recipe to the rest of the group.  After a cookie tasting party, they loaded up the leftovers and we delivered them to our local fire stations as a Christmas gift.  What fun!!

Next month – making lap quilts.

Related posts:

1. Christmas Science Fun