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"Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored." Titus 2:3-5 (NASB)
~ 2009 Theme Verse ~
"Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass" I Thessalonians 5:24 (NASB)
"If you would like to join me in having a theme verse for 2009, click below.
•Praying God's Word Day By DayBy Beth Moore
•The Bible
•For the Children's Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and SchoolBy Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
•Munich SignatureBy Bodie ThoeneFrom The Zion Covenant Series
Crystal at Biblical Womanhood is hosting a meme of sorts to help us get more structure and order in our lives in order to be effective managers of our homes. In her post HERE, Crystal says: "come up with your proposed morning routine. Post it on your blog and leave your link in the comments section below. And then commit to consistently following it each week day, by the grace of God."
Last week, I posted about the morning and evening routine I was beginning to implement. You can read about that HERE. It is very basic and I am not putting rigid time frames right now because that does not work for us right now in some ways because my 11 month old is typically getting up anywhere between 3:00-5:30am. So my day begins when she wakes up and that sets the stage for my time frames in the early morning hours. Having said that, here's the general morning routine I am working on right now:
Upon waking (3:00-5:30am) - Sugarplum's morning feeding
Floor time with Sugarplum (read books, play) and do my muscle-toning exercises
Lay Sugarplum back down after about an hour and then have prayer and in-depth Bible study time for me
At this point, we begin more of a time schedule (well sort of anyway)
8:00am - Breakfast and older daughter's morning routine
10:00am - Sugarplum goes down for her mid-morning nap and my older daughter and I do school work
12:00pm - lunch and older daughter's afternoon routine
I have begun my older daughter on a routine as well. We're really focusing right now on getting a morning and evening routine into habit for her. But we still work on the overall routine. Here's my older daughter's morning routine:
8:00am - wake up if she hasn't already gotten up (sometimes she's up earlier) and read her devotional
Breakfast
After breakfast, she cleans her room (straighten bed, etc.)
Next, she does the morning dishes
Finally, she begins her school work that she does on her own.
At 10:00am we work on the school work that I do with her.
12:00pm - lunch
So as you can see, we have some general time frames but not much. Right now, in this season of life, I have found that pegging us down to rigid time frames not only creates frustration but just plain out won't work. Sugarplum has a general schedule but it can still fluctuate regularly. Just like now - the last few days she has not taken an afternoon nap AT ALL. We'll lay her down but she just won't nap. So it's hard to even plan our afternoons sometimes right now because we don't know if she'll take a nap or not. Thankfully, our school work is usually completely finished by lunch. Usually whatever school work is not finished is stuff that my older daughter does on her own.
Here's our evening routine:
Around 5:00pm - dinner
6:00pm - Sugarplum usually goes to bed at this point. She just seems to want to go to sleep for the night by this time. Sometimes we have to try to keep her awake until 6:00pm!
7:00pm - Family devotions
8:00pm - quiet time (I usually use this time to wind down or finish up any leftover chores that need to be done.)
9:00pm - bed time for older daughter and many times myself as well. If I don't go on to bed, I like to get in my recliner or bed and read a little before going to bed. The books for me to read at this time are my free reading books I guess you could say: Christian fiction for right now. No home management books. No how-to type books, etc. Right now, I am reading the Zion Covenant Series (Christian historical fiction).
Older daughter's evening routine:
5:00-7:00pm - After dinner, she cleans up her room, gets her pajamas on, and then does dinner dishes. This is also the time she gets her shower.
After those chores are finished, it's free time/family time
7:00pm - Family devotions
8:00pm - Quiet time: This is my daughter's free reading time (silent reading). She gets to chose what she wants to read.
8:45pm - brush teeth and prayer time with Daddy
9:00pm - Bed
Usually at some point between dinner and bed, we'll have a little snack. We are doing okay with this new routine. Like I said already my main focus right now is getting that morning and evening routine into habit. Even though we may work on a routine throughout the day, I'm making these two routines a priority for habit building first. Then once that is going strong, I'll add in something else.
The ultimate goal of Christian home education is to train children to impact the world for God. We want our children to not only hear and learn God's Word, but also be doers of God's Word. Therefore, we strive to teach them:
SERVICE - How to serve God and others
ACHIEVEMENT - To do the best they can in all they do from academic subjects to chores to serving others and more
LOVE - To love God and one another
TRUTH - To live their lives based on the absolute Truth of God
The name of this blog is the acronym for these four areas that we strive to teach our children:
S.A.L.T. - Service, Achievement, Love, Truth
