To Fold Underwear or Not to Fold Underwear? That it the Question.

What type of person are you?

In this week’s life skills video, Gideon receives a lesson in folding clothes and organizing drawers and linen cabinets. We even have an intense debate as to whether one should fold their unmentionables- where do you fall on the matter? You can let us know your opinion in the comments below.

Learning how to help out around the house and serve others is important. Our hope in these life skill videos is that we can help teach others in a fun and entertaining way. What kind of life skills videos would YOU like to see us make? Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for watching!!

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Hey, Mom! HOW do I do the Laundry?!?!

One of the never-ending chores of motherhood is the mountain of laundry that never seems to shrink or disappear. But as kids grow older, more capable of following directions and accepting responsibility for household chores, laundry is one of those tasks where mom can happily pass the baton! In our latest video, I take Gideon step-by-step through the process of sorting, washing and drying the clothes properly. We talk about the necessity of sorting, how to properly use the machines and what kinds of materials are needed to wash and dry clothes.

AND, as an added bonus, I created a laundry checklist for YOU! This checklist takes the guess work out of laundry and makes washing whites, lights and dark clothing laundry frustration-free!! Just click on the link below to download your FREE laundry checklist.

Mom, How Do I Do the Laundry_ Checklist (1)Download

Have you taught your kids how to do the laundry? At what age did you begin teaching your kids how to wash clothes? PLEASE, share in the comments down below!

Keep Doing Life Deliberately!

Trisha

Hey, Mom!? How Do I Clean the Bathroom???

Have you taken the time to teach your kids HOW to clean the bathroom? Cleaning the bathroom was my Saturday chore as a kid. I still remember my mom giving me the play-by-play of how to properly clean the bathroom as a child. And you can bet that she let me know if I didn’t do it well! (Ha,ha! Thanks, Mom!)

Well, now it’s MY turn to make sure MY kids know how to clean the bathroom well. In my latest video, I show Isabelle how to clean the bathroom step-by-step. And she does terrific work of getting the job done!

Would you like your very own printable checklist to help guide your kids through the process of cleaning the bathroom? Click the download button below for your FREE bathroom cleaning checklist. I suggest laminating it so the the kids can use it over and over and cross off each step with a dry erase marker as they go! You can hang it on the back of the bathroom door or inside the cabinet with the cleaning supplies so it’s handy when they need it!

dld-bathroom-cleaning-checklistDownload

What chores did you have as a kid? Let me know in the comments below!

Keep Doing Life Deliberately!

Trisha

Need a Homeschool Assist? Check out AOP’s Monarch Curriculum for the Win!

If you are looking for a quality online, self-paced homeschool curriculum that schedules, teaches, corrects AND record-keeps, Alpha Omega Publishing’s Monarch Curriculum is worth a serious look! Check out our latest video for a full curriculum review:

Sometimes Cleaning Up Our Own Messes Is a Little Overwhelming.

Have you ever had a mess get completely out of control? You make a series of little choices to throw this here, toss that there, put off tackling this, shove this other thing under the bed… and before you know it, you have a ginormous mess that is so overwhelming, it’s hard to know where to begin to get things back in order.  (Sounds like a pretty good metaphor for other areas of life, doesn’t it?) 

In today’s video, Isabelle called in an assist from mom. She needed help to tackle the pigsty that was her bedroom.  Of course she had cleaned her own room many times before.  But this time, things had gotten so out of hand, she found herself too overwhelmed to know where to start.  I had asked her repeatedly to get the job done.  But the sheer enormity of the task had given her the “paralysis of analysis”. 

Can you relate?  I can.

Sometimes our kids need us to guide them through overwhelming tasks.  Instead of getting frustrated with their lack of obedience, we need to assess: are they being rebellious? do they lack knowledge needed to do the requested task? or are they overwhelmed and frustrated?  In this case, Izzy was overwhelmed and just needed someone to step in and help.  I was able to help her break up the task into smaller steps and get it done.  Did it take a good chunk of time to get it done?  It sure did.  But we did it together.  And both of us learned a good lesson: it’s GOOD to ask for help.  It’s GOOD to offer help when your child is discouraged.

If you or your kids need a little cleaning motivation, click the link to today’s video!  We hope that this will inspire you and your kids as we look to spring and prepare to declutter and clear out all the cobwebs from winter!

Are you ready for Easter?

Are you ready for the Easter and Lenten season? I make it easy for you to prepare for a Christ-centered season in your family and homeschool with 12 meaningful Easter ideas. I give you free, easy and inexpensive ideas that can make a BIG impact in the hearts of your family! You can find links to all of the websites and products I list in the description box of the video. Thanks for watching and God bless you this Lenten and Easter season!

Keep Doing Life Deliberately,

Trisha

An Unexpected Challenge of Homeschooling

There are lots of challenges when it comes to homeschooling: kids’ bad attitudes, keeping learning fun/interesting, assessing various learning styles, being patient as a teacher, choosing curriculum, etc. I could go on and on. But something that has taken me by surprise is just how difficult it can be to stay on top of checking the kids’ assignments. I have found that as the kids get older, it becomes increasingly time consuming to check the kids’ schoolwork, tutor them through the corrections (because they often need help) and recheck their corrections. Our oldest two children are in 7th and 9th grades, and with each passing year their homework is more time consuming and challenging.

To see the system we use to keep track of assignments and hold our kids accountable to getting their work done, watch my video: How to Manage Homeschool Assignment Books

This was a big struggle for me last year. After a couple weeks of school this past fall, I recognized that this was going to be an even greater struggle this year. So I took my concerns to Principal Martinez (aka, my husband, Joe). Our mutually agreed upon solution: to divide and conquer. Joe would check the older two girl’s schoolwork and I would check the younger kids’ schoolwork. Now is it a perfect system?  It rarely ever is. Do we do it faithfully? No. Some weeks we are more on top of things than others. Ideally, we would like to be checking the kids’ work daily. It takes less time that way, rather than letting it all build up for us to check. It is also less overwhelming to the kids to correct one day’s worth of work rather than five days work. So this is what we aim for.

How about you? Have you run into any unexpected challenges? If you haven’t begun homeschooling, what challenges do you anticipate? Write in the comments below! We’re sure to have some great dialogue and helps as we discuss!

Keep doing life deliberately,

Trisha

Creating Margin in Your Family

Our culture is so ridiculously busy. We have gone from an attitude of “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop” to lives that are too busy to be concerned with anyone else but me. The tendency toward a packed schedule has been my life story. Even as a child, I was a extremely active: afterschool jobs, sports, music lessons, speech, drama, band, 4H, and church activities. There was rarely a day that I did not have an event to go to. And though I was busy and managed to stay out of trouble, looking back I can see that there was not a ton of quality family time. I was pretty consumed by me: what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go. I think that my crazy pace (though it was filled with many, many “good” things), enabled me to become very self-centered.

I am not advocating dropping all extracurriculars, afterschool jobs, and the like. We don’t want to be creating a generation of lazy bums. But I wonder if there is a happy medium to be had: a schedule that allows for kids explore their interests, but not at the cost of quality and quantity family time. Is there a sweet spot that allows our children to be active, but also creates space in their lives to appreciate rest and give of their time to others?

I think one of the serious dangers of not creating margin in our families is that we are not only being selfish with our own time, but we are also leading (by example) our children to be selfish with their time. Time is precious. Time is fleeting. And when we fill our schedules so full of activities that we have no flexibility to meet the needs of others, we have severely limited how God can use us to be a blessing in the lives of others. We have no space/availability to be about our Father’s business.

I think there are a few questions we can ask ourselves to evaluate whether or not we have entered the camp of “too busy, no margin”;

• Do we have a day where we rest together as a family, with no commitments (a day of Sabbath)?

• Do we regularly (not every day, but frequently) sit down at the dinner table and eat together as a family?

• Are we spending more than an hour a day in the car driving to school or extracurricular activities?

• Do we have evenings available in a week where we can show hospitality to others, either by opening our home or meeting people elsewhere for fellowship?

• Do we have enough time in our day to bring a meal to someone in need, pray as a family for someone who is hurting, help someone move, or another random act of kindness?

I am absolutely convinced that when our kids are adults, they will not remember the gifts they received, or the trophies, medals and ribbons they earned. Those things will all collect dust somewhere and fade from memory. But the things they will treasure, that will stay with them forever, are the experiences they had with their family and friends. I want to make space for my children (who like me are sinful and selfish by nature) to learn to open their eyes to observe the needs of those around them, to use their minds and hearts to consider how they can meet those needs, and to use their time and abilities to meet those needs. But if I let my kids’ schedules get too full with no margin, there will literally be no space for our kids to learn that selflessness and practice sacrificial love. I can’t make my kids selfless, but I can create an environment in our daily lives that creates space for those opportunities to learn and practice selflessness, kindness, and rest.

If you want to see more about how I schedule our homeschool days, click on the link: How I Schedule Our Homeschool

What challenges does your family face in creating space for margin and rest in your home? Do you have any insights or tools that you can share with other Doing Life Deliberately readers so that they can have success in this area? PLEASE, share your thoughts below!! We’d love to hear from you!!

Until next time, keep Doing Life Deliberately!

~Trisha

Homeschool: God’s Mandate For Parents

That’s a big title, I know. And I bet you didn’t know that God requires that His people homeschool their kids. But it’s there. Just look at Deuteronomy 6:4-9~

4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. – Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Ok, so He’s not talking necessarily about academically educating your children at home. BUT, He is talking about educating your children at home. Our faith in Jesus Christ is not to be a one day a week experience. God commands parents to not only walk with Him themselves, but to teach their children to walk with Him, as well. It is NOT the Church’s primary responsibility to disciple your children- it is primarily the parents’ responsibility to train up their children to know and love the Lord. There is so much rich instruction given in these verses. God does not require that our kids go through a formal curriculum or that they go through a confirmation class- though those things are good and worthy of our time. But God desires for Christian parents to saturate their homes with talk of His goodness, His love, His instructions, His promises. Above all, He wants parents to teach their kids not to be good people, but to be people who can’t help but do good things because they are so consumed by their love of God which permeates every aspect of their being: their heart, soul and might.

It is our conviction, that one of the best ways to convey this love is by home educating our children. This is our strongest motivator for homeschooling. The public school system is certainly NOT going to teach our kids to love the Lord. Their peers at school (on the whole) are not going to teach them to love the Lord. But if we educate them at home, for better or for worse, we (their parent’s) get to be their biggest influencers. And you better believe, we feel the weight of that responsibility.

The curriculum used public schools (and most private schools, for that matter) will not teach them to love the Lord. When homeschooling, we get to choose what curriculum we use. We opt to use Christ-centered curriculum that points our children to the truths of God’s Word- whether we examine the character and choices of men throughout history, examine science through the lens of scripture, marvel at God’s orderly character through math, or read literature examining the worldview and choices of characters.

Finally and most importantly, we can open up God’s Word every day together, pray, discuss what the Word means and how it applies to our lives (and your kids don’t have to be academically educated at home to do that!). It is our greatest delight to intercede for others with our children, to hear them ask questions about God’s Word and to see them choose to seek Him on their own. But these beautiful jewels of love for the Lord and character growth are not accidents. They are also not works that we can fabricate or magically produce as parents. They are gifts of grace from God- a beautiful blessing as we pour the love of God into our kids and watch Him grow them from the inside out.

Our kids are not perfect. They are as flawed and sinful as their mom and dad. Homeschooling is not perfect. Every homeschooling family struggles in different ways. But it is a gift from God to spend quantity and quality time with our kids, influencing them to love and follow hard after the Lord who loves them so much, “He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

If you would like to hear more about WHY we chose to homeschool, click on this link to see my latest video: The Top 10 Reasons Why We Chose to Homeschool

How do YOU deliberately influence your kids to follow Christ? We’d love to hear what that looks like in your family, so PLEASE, share in the comments below!!

Until next time, keep doing life deliberately,

Trisha

Building Gratitude Into Your Kids

Who doesn’t want a grateful kid?  Every parent longs for their child to show appreciation for the kindness extended to them- whether by friend, family or stranger.

But a thankful heart is not something that happens by accident.  It takes teaching, nurturing and consistent practice. When Thanksgiving rolls around, we’re prone to reflect on the good gifts that God has given us.  Below are some considerations of how you can practice showing gratitude with your children and train them to have thankful hearts:

• consistently teach toddlers and preschoolers to say thank you whenever a kindness is done to them.
• when praying together (at meals, bedtimes, etc.), make it a priority to thank God for His kindnesses shown to you that day
• create a poster, visible to everyone, where each member of the family can write down why they are grateful.  Make it colorful- even your smallest children will enjoy listing off and drawing things that they are thankful for.
• make it a regular practice to write thank you notes to people who show you a kindness- whether a gift or service.  One mom even suggested not allowing kids to play with new toys until the thank you note is written!! (Way to go, Mom!)
• be quick to draw attention to answered prayers and God’s provision.  Keep a list in a journal for yourself and/or a visible list or poster for the family to celebrate together.
• praise God in the moment when you- mom or dad- are thankful for God’s activity in your life.  Impromptu praises show your kids that God is at work all the time and not just within the walls of a church or at certain times.
• memorize bible verses that talk about giving thanks, such as Psalm 9:1, 1 Thessalonians 5:18, or 1 Chronicles 16:34
• most importantly, regularly express your gratitude to God in front of your kids for God’s work of salvation through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ!

As Mom and Dad exemplify gratitude to their kids and give them opportunities to join in the blessings of a thankful heart, children will rise to the occasion and learn to be grateful, too.  November is a great time to purposefully up our thankfulness game and deliberately practice thanksgiving.

What are some ways your family practices gratitude?  Please, share your thoughts, ideas and suggestions in the comments below!