Posted on by aprilbumgardner

Morning Habits

Gathering together in the mornings has always been important for me in our home school. On the rare days we skip it, I feel it is hard to reconnect with the older ones particularly. As we come together, I hope we are able to set a tone for our day of rest, an attitude of attentiveness to God and one another.

[Wipes away tears, laughing] Ok, ok, when we both collect ourselves again, I will continue. I mean, I do have three boys, right? Their priorities are not likely the same as mine. Often they begin their day with no greater goal than to hurry up and be done with their work. Even so, we plug away at our morning meetings, because over time the things we do repeatedly, unthinkingly, in mundane ways can form us into better people. This is how God forms us. As we cast our cares on him, or say our meals, as we sweep after dinner or talk with one another late at night, these habits and traditions make us who we are and can transform us into who we will be.

And so each morning, whether my boys care or not, whether they are engaged or not, we gather together for a few moments before we all disperse to our separate corners of the house or living room or kitchen to complete our own work.

Every day our family experiences its own micro-diaspora. Like the early Christians gathered in Jerusalem waiting for instruction after the ascension of Jesus, we gather in our sunroom before being sent out.

Each year our morning time looks slightly different. This year we have my oldest back with us. He put in a few years at a private school, but is now back with us to finish out high school next year. Our road has been up and down with this one, but we are so grateful to have him back home.

We always have Bible readings. Some years we incorporate art appreciation or poetry. Here is what the 2019-2020 has looked like:

B I B L E

This year we read through the book of 2 Samuel as the youth in our church were studying this particular book.

We moved on to Advent readings in the prophets, then 1 John and the Gospel of Mark guiding us through Lent. As we finish out the school year we are choosing selected passages from the Gospel of Luke. My oldest has been choosing these for us. He uses YouVersion Bible app and likes to randomize the translations he reads from. Admittedly, this aggravates the youngest who has more difficulty following along if the words don’t match up just right.

Mostly, we read the passage and pray briefly. Other times we might practice lectio divina, although they are often too impatient to participate in this. They do enjoy periodically practicing imaginative prayer, placing yourself within the story and using your senses to explore the text.

We name things in the story we wonder about.

T H E B I B L E P R O J E C T

Along with our Bible reading we started watching YouTube videos produced by the animators at thebibleproject. This is a crowd-funded group who creates animated videos on the literary themes and stories of the Bible, as well as podcasts and other resource teaching materials. They are impressive for their quality, accessibility and depth. Each book of the Bible has its own 5 – 7 minute video highlighting the setting, genre, structure and message. We are currently up to the book of Jeremiah.

And we follow this all up with the day’s episode of CNN 10 with Carl Azuz. We have watched the ten minute world news report off and on over the last several years. It keeps us just enough informed without the news becoming oppressive in our thoughts. You know what I mean, right? Often, a human interest story or science and technology feature will inspire us (sometimes read, distract) to look something up or ask questions. The nine-year-old usually stops Carl at the end before he starts in on his “cringey” puns. G’s words, not mine.

So what do I hope we gain this year from our morning time together? A few things:

1. I hope we recognize ourselves as a single unit, a unified family with many members functioning together. ( 1 Corinthians 12:12-14)

2. I hope that God’s word seeps into all the cracks of their minds and hearts, and stays. I hope that years later they will remember reading passages in times of need. I hope that this daily Bible reading will become so normal, so habitual that they will do it on their own.

3. I hope they learn how to read the Bible well. I hope they will understand that these ancient documents have personal and eternal significance, but that they also have specific genres and settings and immediate audiences.

4. I hope that in engaging with the text of Scripture in a variety of ways, they will develop an appreciation for it. I hope that through its stories they will learn how to empathize with the characters in it. I hope they grow their biblical imaginations and that it leads them into more profound lives of faith.

5. I hope that by maintaining an awareness of the world,we can maintain a worldview that confirms God’s sovereignty in all things while recognizing our partnership with him as his people. I hope that they love the world.

Next year may look different. We may not include as many things in our time together. My guys may be sick of watching videos. It is difficult to rally 2 teenaged boys out of bed at similar times. But our priorities will always be the same.

Home schoolers, how do you start your mornings? What is your favorite thing you do together?

Other schoolers, how do you develop routines in your family? What has been the most beneficial habit that has stuck?

Posted on by aprilbumgardner

Ode to the Sunday School Teacher

Unashamedly, I am still basking in the glow of my Prince Edward Island adventure. Upon returning home, I have read The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery for the first time, which incidentally, I purchased from the Site of the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Cavendish Home. The paperback proudly bears the stamp.

And I have been re-reading The Story Girl, supposedly the author’s favorite of her novels.

Combine these readings with the fact that our church has been talking about our responsibility of reading for the sake of the community, and throw in the fact that I just completed Reading for the Common Good: How Books Help Our Churches and Neighborhoods Flourish by C. Christopher Smith, have been planning Bible home school curriculum for this next year for my boys, and the fact that I have substituted teaching in children’s Bible classes a few times at church this summer, and it is not difficult to see why a couple of these passages spoke sweetly to me.

Montgomery, who married the Presbyterian minister Ewen MacDonald, was a theological thinker in her own right. With a knack for describing hypocrisies and frivolous loyalties to tradition and prejudices, Montgomery often snuck in satirical statements through her most upright and judgmental of characters. Remember the proudly outspoken Mrs. Rachel Lynde? In a letter to Anne in college, she writes,

“I don’t believe any but fools enter the ministry nowadays….Such candidates as they have sent us, and such stuff as they preach! Half of it ain’t true, and what’s worse, it ain’t sound doctrine. The one we have now is the worst of the lot. He mostly takes a text and preaches about something else. And he says he doesn’t believe all the heathen will be eternally lost. The idea! If they won’t all the money we’ve been giving to Foreign Missions will be clean wasted, that’s what!”

~from Anne of the Island, chapter 5 “Letters from Home”

Now contrast Anne’s enthusiasm for the young and lovely minister’s wife, Mrs. Allan.

“I never knew before that religion was such a cheerful thing. I always thought it was kind of melancholy, but Mrs. Allan isn’t, and I’d like to be a Christian if I could be one like her.”

~Anne confiding to Marilla in Anne of Green Gables, p. 172

Wouldn’t we all want this to be said of us?

So, for those of you who are teaching a Sunday school class, who open the Bible in front of young minds and share words of truth and life, you are filling more than an hour’s void.

“The social life of juvenile Carlisle centered in the day and Sunday schools. We were especially interested in our Sunday School, for we were fortunate enough to be assigned to a teacher who made our lesson so interesting that we no longer regarded Sunday School attendance as a disagreeable weekly duty, but instead looked forward to it with pleasure, and tried to carry out our teacher’s gentle precepts- at least on Mondays and Tuesdays. I am afraid the remembrance grew a little dim on the rest of the week.”

~ from The Story Girl, p. 26

You are providing a vision of what it means to be part of a kingdom of grace and love. It is a great service in which the subjects are only coincidentally small. If nothing else, you are narrating a picture of God’s appealing beauty. May your story be consistently bewitching and inviting.

Posted on by aprilbumgardner · 4 Comments

Do you walk to school or do you take your lunch?* (Or why we are homeschooling now)

Why does it often take us so long? Sometimes it really bothers me that it takes us so long to wake up, eat breakfast and start our day.  I mean, if we are all downstairs at 7:00 a.m., why is it sometimes 9:00, or later, before we are gathered ready to start our learning?  Is it a prime example of wasted time, how we squander moments when we could actually be utilizing them to greater advantage?  Or am  I merely revealing my type A personality, proving to myself that I feel the incorrigible need to be forever productive?  Most likely the latter.  Family ought to be a comfortable place, a place where you are allowed to just be.  While our days seem full and busy, full of individual responsibilities, it is the role of family to allow each to breathe, to enjoy one another’s company, to be thankful that we are safe and together. So why does it take us two hours to eat breakfast and collect our books? Foremost, we are not particularly go-getters in the morning.  I sit over two to three cups of coffee, thinking, planning our day, but mostly mustering the strength and stamina necessary to get us through seventh grade math and a writing task.  A is petting the cat while lying on the floor.  G is reenacting superhero battles over and over in the dining room where he has more space. S is scrambling an egg and somehow using two or three extra bowls.  Each child eats separate breakfasts and prepares it themselves, and while this is great practice in life skills, it is also not the most efficient.  I need to make my peace with this.

The truth is I am weak, but our days are fairly productive except, of course, when they aren’t.  Does that last sentence remind anyone else of Dr. Seuss?  We choose not to overextend ourselves with outside activities.  We surround ourselves with positive people we admire- mostly people from our church.  The kids have plenty of time to play, get on the iPad, lie around the house, construct things around the house from blocks, legos and random objects, create their own comic strips at 8:55 in the morning, and have plenty of time to be bored. The simple fact is it is ok we are slow starters.  We are far from squandering our time in the mornings.  I need, instead, to be savoring it.  Really, at least partially, this is why we began homeschooling.   Before we began the homeschooling adventure which has increased the chaos and noise level in our home exponentially, I read article after article advising me to write down for posterity our personal reasons for choosing home education.  The articles promised it would serve us well in times of uncertainty. I offer to you, reader of this post, a private peek into our family’s thoughts.  This is why we choose to make pancakes or scones on a weekday, why we take two hours to eat breakfast, why it is more than ok for us to bump aimlessly into one another from room to room in the mornings until we are sufficiently awake.  Just a caveat: I know many families who tackle these objectives admirably while sending their children to public school.  Keeping our kids home was not our only option, but it was the one which called the most obviously to us, beckoning a new vision for what our family could look like.  We are still living by hope and faith, eager to see how our children and family develop.  Here are my words I jotted down three years ago.  Most of the reasons are salient today.

Our Reasons to Homeschool

Family –

To regain our sense of family love

To renew our relationship with one another

To allow us to enjoy our children at their best times of the day, and to alleviate the stress of the morning scramble for the school bus and the afternoon fights over homework.

Education – 

To be in control of what and how we taught our children, including life skills, spiritual teaching, character lessons, multi-cultural topics, an international worldview, and a strong focus on their own individual academic interests.

To enjoy being directly involved in the boys’ learning and self-guided study

Due to a concern at losing them in the public school system, not wanting learning to become a drudgery, but a joy

Social – 

Due to a concern with placing A in a middle school setting too soon (that is fifth grade where we live).

To give our children more distinctly positive social opportunities

Some of you may disagree home schooling to be a viable answer to these issues.  Some of you may not even recognize or share any of these concerns regarding your own children.  That is understandable.  We may not always feel the same way as I did three years ago, or as we do today.  But this is why we are doing what we are doing now.

Doing nothing for two hours in the mornings may not be an option in a few years, but indubitably I do not miss chasing down the school bus or scrambling for a lost homework paper after cramming down toast and jam.  I can  choose to see days with slow, lazy unproductive beginnings, or I can appreciate my family all together functioning as a unit, albeit imperfectly.  My boys can wake up slowly if they choose, and they are good friends.  I don’t think I want to change that.

How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!

Psalm 133:1

*The title of this post is a bit tongue-in-cheek.  Growing up, my dad would always ask these sort of nonsensical questions, which on the surface, do not seem necessarily related.  Back in his day, however, those kids who did walk to school were also allowed to go home for lunch.  So, if you brought your lunch, you probably did not walk.  As homeschoolers we sometimes go for walks, sometimes we take our lunch, sometimes we hit Subway or Chipotle, and sometimes we just stay home for lunch.