Whether you send your children off to school each morning or teach them at home, it is helpful to set goals in the area of educating our children. From toddlers to preschoolers to teenagers, our children are always learning from us.
1. Develop their relationship with God. As a Christian parent, my highest priority is to encourage them to have their own walk with God. In earlier days, one of the main reasons for teaching children to read was so that they would be able to read the Bible for themselves. Beginning Scripture memory at an early age also plants the seed of God’s Word in their hearts.
2. Give them an awareness of the world around us and the people who live in it. Teaching them how to interact with other children, adults, people from different cultures, those in need, etc., is a way to implement “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Traditional subjects like history and science fit perfectly into this goal as our children are introduced to the way the physical world works and how people have interacted throughout the centuries.
3. Build character. By reading books about Godly men and women and pointing out the moral traits and principles that characterized their lives, we can help our children see the importance of character in their daily dealings.
4. Develop the talents God has given them. Make time for pursuing their interests. This may mean that they try several activities in order to find just the right fit for them.
5. Create a thirst for lifelong learning. No matter how much time we spend “schooling,” we can never teach them all there is to know about a subject. If I can help them to love learning and give them the skills for delving deeper into a topic, then they will continue to learn well after their formal schooling is over.
These are goals that I hope I can work towards with our children. Let me know if you have other goals that you strive for as you educate your children.
This post was originally published on August 19, 2011.
Fantastic goals! I REALLY need help with #5! I am a list person, I have a very hard time straying from bought curriculum (which at times, I know can be boring). I am really going to try to deviate from that this year, in hopes of bringing back some fun in our homeschooling journey. For both mine and my daughter's sake. 🙂
Jennifer,
You know I can identify!! While I LOVE my schedule, my goal is to be flexible enough to allow school to be "fun" as well as educational. Here's hoping it works well for both of us! 🙂
These are wonderful goals – and very similar to what I'm striving for!!
That's an excellent list of goals, Tracey! I'm really looking forward to reading more about your homeschooling journey and how you go about integrating these goals into your lives! I've never really written a list of goals, but I think mine would be pretty similar to yours, although one I would probably add/expand on would be to teach my children to learn about the ways they can serve the Lord no matter what their situation in life is, and how that service can grow and develop for Him. I think that one fits a little bit into each of your 5 points!! 🙂
Wow – what a fantastic list of goals. Amen, I say 🙂