Children love sweets.  Ice cream, candy, cookies, you name it.  Something that I learned early in motherhood is that once sweets are introduced, it becomes a little one’s main mission to consume as much as mom will allow.  Suddenly the sweet baby, who only yesterday, was content with baby food, begins asking, sometimes demanding sweets.

We desire our children to consume lots of healthy, God made food.  With this end in mind, we keep the amount of sweets limited.  I serve healthy, flavorful meals.  And you know what?  My children eat them!  Sure, there is the initial training in this area but lots of gentle perseverance has always done the trick.

In addition to providing healthy foods, we also model healthy eating.  This means mom and dad practicing what they are teaching!  (Tip:  If you fill your pantry with junk food, that is what everyone will gravitate to.)

I would like to take this idea of developing healthy appetites and apply it to the area of free time.  Just as children gravitate to sweets over healthy food, I believe they also are drawn to high stimulation activities over simple, God honoring pursuits.  So often  I hear about children within homeschooling that have no interest in reading, board games or the simple pleasure of nature watching.

Perhaps this is the result of developing an appetite for being entertained by television, video games and IPods.  Just as sugar dulls a child’s taste buds, these activities dull their other senses.  It is not so much a debate over whether television and video games are bad.  The matter becomes what these pursuits replace.

One of the toughest things about this issue is the simple fact that children will follow our examples.  How are we spending our time?  Our first priority as believers should be to love and glorify our Creator.  Do our activities show this?  Let us store up our treasure in heaven and not here on earth. 

Have you ever seen one of those charts that are designed to help you make healthier choices in regards to your diet?  One side shows the unhealthy food while the other side suggests a healthier alternative.  In keeping with the developing healthy appetites theme, I would like to offer such a list for activities.

May you and your family find joy in developing God honoring appetites.

  When I take the time to observe our children doing chores, I am truly amazed.  In general, they complete their chores every day.  Only occasionally do I have to call someone back for a redo.  I do not remind them or nag them that it is chore time.  We sure have come a long way.  It is amusing to think back to our chores in the early years.  Sometimes we would go several days without doing chores.   Other days we would partially complete our chores.  So how did we make this change?  Well, the real change came to my attitude and level of consistency.

In the early years, the children’s chores were so small.  It did not seem like a big deal if they were missed. Oh how short sighted that was!  As a mom with only small children, I failed to realize that it was not really about the chores.  It was about order, consistency, and diligence.  A little boy that frequently skips chores becomes a big boy with an identical habit.

I made a set chore time and stuck to it.  The children were trained in their chores and chore inspections took place.  On occasion consequences were given.  This might sound like an awful lot of work.   Well, yes and no.  It definitely took a chunk a time and energy.   However as I look back at that period of life, that amount of time and energy expended was extremely small compared to the dividends it pays out today.  I now have five children.  There is no end to the things I must do, but household chores are only a small fraction of it.  My children clean readily and joyfully.  The youngest ones come up with their own chores because they see what an important part of the family chores are.  They want to be important.  All of this frees me a lot of time that I can spend elsewhere.  All it took was a little bit of patience and an initial time investment.

Katy has wanted to play violin for a while.  We weren't quite sure how to pull it off as we didn't have money for regular lessons.  Last summer I read about a wonderful violin program called  The Violin Book.  I filed it away with plans to use it down the road.  So after our big move, I decided it was a good time to get started.  I figured it would give her something to look forward to as she was adjusting to her new surroundings.

We purchased a used violin from a fellow homeschooler and bought the first four books of the program.  The program looks great and is completely understandable whether or not you have musical training.  It has a friendly tone and we feel almost like we have a teacher right there with us.

Katy is in the beginning phases of the program.  It is exciting to see her practicing and learning.  I look forward to hearing beautiful music soon.