In a recent blog comment, a reader asked about how building a house has affected our homeschooling. The past two years, we have not only had the major project in our daily schedule of building a house, but also of three months or so of being on the road for conferences. The children are still on track with their school, and they should be finished or almost finished by our usual school year completion date of Memorial Day.
Joseph, age 19, had graduated from high school before we began building our house so he was available full time to help with the house. John, who is 18 and graduating this year, did bookwork school in the morning and apprentice work with his dad on the house in the afternoons. Since John is planning to work in the construction field, the afternoon school hours were profitable for him as vocational study time.
As a side note, Joseph and John are the ones who initially volunteered to build the house. They said they would build it while Steve wrote books. They since realized that was a bit ambitious and that they needed their dad’s expertise and help continually, but we were grateful for their desire to bless our family and our ministry. In addition, in the midst of building the house Steve and I were even able to write our most recent book, Managers of Their Schools.
The other three children did their normal school and then would help at the house after school. We have a four day school week so everyone helped with the house on Fridays and Saturdays. The children all worked all day on house building projects during the past two summers. Most generally building work ended at dinner time so that evenings were reserved for showers, family Bible time, music practice, and family fellowship.
Jesse and I doing Algebra together.
The children are motivated to get up at 5:45 a.m. so that they can have their personal Bible time, eat breakfast, do a couple of chores, and be ready to start school no later than 7:30 a.m. This allows them to finish school earlier in the day.
Steve is a dad who encourages his family that we work while we have breath, and we rest in heaven (in addition to the Lord’s day). That work is both spiritual and physical. So much of what the Lord has taught us through our years of homeschooling and why we have been able to do what we do plus homeschool is laid out in these books: Managers of Their Homes, Managers of Their Chores, Managers of Their Schools, and Preparing Sons to Provide for a Single-Income Family. We are not “Super Family,” but we do make choices with our time and our activities because we want to do all that we can for the Lord Jesus Christ while we can.
Trusting in Jesus,
Teri
“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest” (Proverbs 6:6-8)
. We are very disappointed with the place we had originally had the work done last summer, and then we took it back to them last fall after we discovered the leaking windows. We thought they had fixed it, but no, they’re still leaking. Please pray for Dad as he figures out how to fix the problem!
. Here she is with Grandma.
