God's Blessings--A Homeschool Update

I have been extremely overwhelmed by all the blessings God has poured down on my family since pulling DS out of school 4 1/2 weeks ago. Every time I stop to think about how much our family has already changed in just a month, it makes my heart so happy.

In one month, my DS has gone from a very beginner reader to reading on a 2nd grade level (according to the lexile measure of books). The first week of HSing, DS wrote a story on his own that had terrible penmanship and all his words excluded vowels. Last week he wrote another story and his penmanship was nearly perfect, and all the words were spelled right without my help. He went from barely tolerating his sisters to loving being with them and when he prays during our prayer time before bed, he always thanks God for a wonderful day, that we all got to be home together, and he has stopped asking about things at school.

Before we started HSing DS, I would lament to my DH how in doing schoolwork with my DD, it would ask questions like, "what do you do to show you love God?" or "how are you becoming more like Christ?" and how we really weren't doing anything beyond going to church and praying over meals. We wanted our kids to know and love Jesus, but we weren't actually DOING anything to help them know and love Him. Well, now we are every day. We pray before school and we pray before bed and read a short devotional. Even my 2 year old begs for her turn to say a prayer.

We are reading through the history of the Bible in school. We are memorizing scripture. And my kids are starting to apply that scripture to their actions. When they argue or complain, the other kid will spout off with "Do everything without arguing or complaining..." and it shuts the complainer right up. I hear my DD singing or saying verses as she is playing all the time.

I FINALLY feel like we are being proactive in our house rather than reactive and that my kids are actually learning what it means to love Jesus and to follow Him.