Do you wonder if serving others is worth the time and energy?  Before we talk about the many benefits of serving with your children, let’s get real about time and energy.  It’s limited.

We can’t serve everyone all the time. But we can serve those in our path, in our world a little at a time. Don’t feel like you have to dedicate every other hour to serving outside your home. If you are homeschooling, your major attention needs to be at home. But make a little room for serving, too.

Serving Meets Real Needs

Our homes are real and the individuals in our homes have real needs.  The real world has real needs, too. And they really need us.

Serving our communities meets a real need of the real world using the real people in our real homes.

Perspective

Our homeschooling world, necessarily and by choice, revolves around our home, the foundation of civilization (yes, it’s that important).

The world, however, does not revolve around our home or our homeschooling endeavors.

Sometimes we need the perspective that service brings.  I remember an older woman telling me once, “At home, we are in control of many decisions. When we leave home, we think we can still have that level of control.  But it’s not ours to control.”

Yes. That hurt. But it also saved my soul from continued and self-magnified stress at home and beyond.

Help for Depression and Anxiety

I struggled with depression and anxiety while homeschooling my two children. The world seemed to rest upon my shoulders. At least their worlds did. With life-threatening health challenges, every meal, every activity, every decision was weighted by whether it would extend their lives or end them.

Serving with my children, outside the home, helped me immensely.  Carving out just a wee bit of time, helped me see that others were going through major life challenges, too, including the reality of my greatest fear, losing my child.

Of course, I also saw the mountain out of molehill situations.  “She’s worried about her child’s skinned knee?  I’m worried my daughter might lose her leg!”

The Lord used both – the worse than we had it and the dear gravy get a grip – situations to woo me to His heart. He showed me compassion. For me. For my children. And for the mom whose worst nightmare was putting a band-aid on her child.  Oh to be that mom again!

Opportunity for Application of Knowledge

How many of us in school had the opportunity to put our classroom lessons into real world practice? Most lessons were taught as tangents to the real world, something to be learned to pass a test, not to practice in life.

As homeschoolers, we have the opportunity to apply the knowledge we glean – both as parents and students – serving our communities.

• Biblical knowledge applied is wisdom. Oh to apply wisdom, rainboots in the puddles (homeschool version of boots on the ground) is a parent’s dream!
• Social skills can be applied to culturally unique situations.
• Compassion stirred through literary studies can translate to caring for hurting people in our world today.
• Practical skills, such as cooking, cleaning, serving meals, decorating, writing, computer skills, math, and more can be a great blessing to communities and service organizations.

Promotes Thankfulness

When we serve beyond our homes, a natural thankfulness follows.

• Thankfulness to those who have cared for us.
• Thankfulness for the blessings we have.
• Thankfulness for abundance to serve from our overflow, even if it begins as a trickle.
• Thankfulness that God provides, so we can serve from our lack.

Offers an Opportunity to Give What We Need

So many times we hold so tightly to the little we have not realizing how much we really have.

Need love? Share love.

Need groceries? Share a meal or a dessert.

Need hope? Share hope.

We may find we have more than we feared we didn’t have.

Remember, serve with your family not instead of them. The benefits you gain together will last far longer than the check mark on your child’s homeschool resume. Or on yours.

Do you want to serve your community, church, country or another part of the world? Do you feel unable to do so because you have children who are not only at home, but learning at your kitchen table, feeding from the edu-meals you provide?

Homeschooling our children doesn’t disqualify us from serving. Homeschooling provides a unique opportunity to serve.

Our home becomes a home base of operations, a place to begin, a place to build, and a place to come home to.

Begin with Prayer as Fellow Journeyers

Pray with your children as fellow journeyers. We are in this together. We want their hearts involved, not just their hands.

One of our first neighborhood outreaches, inspired through prayer with the wee ones, was a baby step – seemingly so huge at the time – which ignited a fire in their hearts.

Small steps of faith can ignite a fire in the heart.

Fired Up Next Steps

Fired up by God’s blessing on their project, my little ones’ next idea was way bigger than we could pull off. We dug deep into our lint-filled pockets, the children voluntarily contributing their own wee resources to the outreach.

We need to be willing to invest in our ministry ideas, not just delegate them to others.

God provided a great deal when He saw the heart of the children wanting to reach as many as possible. We loaded our plastic green wagon with promise books and walked about the neighborhood knocking on doors sharing the love and Word of God.

Many people thought we were early Trick or Treaters, expecting to be asked for a handout of candy. They didn’t quite know what to do when they found we were there to give them something.

Baby Steps to Upper Elementary Steps

For perspective, my children were no older than 5-7 years old at the time of our first steps into the neighborhood. Those baby steps became upper elementary leaps when at a family counseling session, a blind counselor — wise in heart, blind in health — suggested we create a new family tradition to bring us together at a time that life was trying desperately to tear us apart.

Discussing ideas with the children, praying with them, the not-quite-as-littles wanted to continue to reach the neighborhood with the light of the gospel. So our annual Light the Night tradition began. I won’t get into details, but feel free to ask me about it. The funniest (and strangest) comment was when my family doctor asked, “Is that legal?”

From Neighborhood to Community: Serve in the World You Are In

My daughter’s dream service came true when she was old enough to volunteer at Ronald McDonald House. Who knew but God, our family’s involvement would begin from inside the House as patients/guests before reaching in from the outside as volunteers.

My son joined my daughter and me, wholeheartedly cooking, cleaning, and serving, welcoming the opportunity to give back to an organization that served our family so faithfully in times of medical need. He also loved playing chess with one of the patients!

Look for natural opportunities to serve as a family in the world God places you.

Community to the World

One of our now-grown family’s passions is Operation Christmas Child, reaching beyond our community to the larger world needing hope and truth.

God still uses those early days of trusting Him for a wagon load of books to remind us Whose project this is, Who will provide, and Who will get the glory as is due Him.

The Challenge to Trust

As you serve in what seem small ways to the eyes of the world (but feel like monstrous steps of faith), your trust in God to provide resources will continue to be stretched.

You will see need and opportunity you didn’t see before.

You will be challenged to pray for God’s provision, for wisdom, for balance between service outside the home and service inside the home.

Keep Home Base Homey

Be cautious. The needs of the world are many. They can overwhelm us and distract us from the needs in our own homes. Pray for God’s view, so that with our generous outlay of time, energy and emotion “out there” we don’t forget there is an “in here,” too.

Our children will be young for such a short time. Serve with them, not instead of them.

God lets us know He needs us and we respond, “Here we are. Send us.”

Sometimes, He needs us more at home; sometimes He needs us more beyond. Let Him lead on the journey.

Is He knocking on your home’s door to open it to beyond?

How You Can Prepare Your Family for Service

1. Be prepared to learn alongside your children.
2. Pray with your children.
3. Brainstorm freely and wildly. So much fun!
4. Be open to their suggestions.
5. List the skills and resources you have.
6. List the skills and resources you need.
7. Ask God to fill the need.
8. Start where you are.
9. Trust God to increase or decrease as He sees fit.
10. Don’t focus on numbers, focus on people.
11. Begin, serve and end with God.
12. Take time to rest. Then go with Him all over again!

I just discovered a new root beer love. My tastes have always leaned toward the two letters with an ampersand between draft root beer brand persuasion. But recently, I was introduced to a root beer with a name similar to that of a beloved snowman I grew up with.

In fact, I was on my front porch sipping my first Frostie when I drafted this post. I am a retired homeschool mom, having educated my children from cradle to graduation. On the homeschooling journey, root beer taught me a few things.

New Loves are Seasonable

We may enjoy the same brand of root beer for decades until we develop an interest in a new taste. It’s like that with homeschooling.

As moms of home education, life may start to taste the same day in and day out —laundry, dishes, teaching, laundry, dishes, teaching. But we can develop new edu-tastes.

If you are content with your favorite brand, stick with it!  But if you are looking for something new, something different, something to liven up your homeschooling adventure, look into a different way of learning.

Remember: Homeschooling is One of Your Passions

I remember feeling that resources—like grocery budgets—limited my freedom to dig into my own passions, my own interests, my own tastes. But then I discovered something about myself; I imagine you may be able to relate.

Homeschooling is one of your passions, or you wouldn’t be doing it.

Do people drink root beer because they have to? No, they do it because they enjoy root beer. You do enjoy homeschooling, or you wouldn’t be setting aside so much of your life to do it.  Sometimes, we just need to get a different taste in our mouths from a fresh recipe to see how much we enjoy it.

Invest in Your Homeschooling Passions

Like all worthwhile aspirations, homeschooling takes time. And a lot of energy. And some money. If we homeschool out of a passion for learning, a passion allowing our children to discover life, shucking the edu-oyster side by side, then we are investing in our passions.

Other interests may need to sit on the refrigerator shelf, waiting for the day you can pop that puppy open on a hot day. But it will wait for you. Your children won’t. Even a rose bush follows seasonal rhythms knowing its beauty will diminish if it attempts all its tasks simultaneously.

Appetizing Lessons

The biggest challenge to our taste buds—whether of root beer or education materials—is avoiding the bland, the tasteless, the sipping for sipping sake, the generic text if our edu-tastes aren’t sparked by generic.

It’s easy to forget we want to do what we’re doing when some of the tasks are less than appetizing. Bright Ideas Press curriculum has a way of turning interesting subjects into powerful, hands-on, hearts-in time with our families.

Even the subjects less interesting to us—maybe because we’ve only tasted the generic brand—come alive with creativity, sparking interest in cells, vacuoles, Julius Caesar, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Generic curriculum, no more! We have tasted life! Learning becomes a gourmet experience, inviting all of our senses to engage.

Back to the Root Beer Story

I may have sipped one of my last bottles of root beer with my son for a long time to come. He is now interning in DC, hoping for full-time employment as a journalist. We’ve shared a lot of life together and a LOT of root beer.

We’ve created cookie systems of cardiology, we’ve picked through owl pellets (ok, the kids did that, while I held the anti-ick spray), we’ve talked history into the wee hours of the night, travelled the globe in our living room, and so much more.

Now, it’s time to share life apart. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, there’s plenty right about it. While he digs into his world of interest, I have time to explore more of my own.

Change Your Tastes Forever

Pop the top off the good stuff, friends. Explore all that Bright Ideas Press has to offer your family.  It’ll change your tastes forever.

Does the word notebooking suggest joyful twitters of discovery or terrifying shivers of more work to do? The answer might be in its application. Notebooking, in its practical outworking, falls into two categories:

• Parental Busywork in which the parent or co-op teacher does most of the work through preparation
• Child Creation in which the child has free reign to create and record his own journey of discovery

We must ask, “Which one meets the needs of the child? And which of the teacher?”

Parental Control Means Parental Busywork

As parents (or co-op teachers) putting together notebooks, lapbooks, and other such creative expressions, we can get lost in our own quest for creativity and forget that it is the children’s creativity and love for learning that we want to foster, not our own need for a pretty product.

Are you tired of prepping notebooks?

Here are a few suggestions as I’ve been there, I know the temptation:

• Parents: Gather supplies.
• Children: Use the supplies.
• Parents: Assign concepts to be incorporated.
• Children: Use assigned concepts as a template for individuality.
• Parents: Lead.
• Children: Create.

Notebooking is a process, not a product.

Child Creation Means Child Control

As parents, we want the best for our children. However, that best may not be the output they produce but the process they employ.

Will a child learn to cut a straight line if we do all the cutting for them?Will a child learn which colors look right together if we tell them what colors they must use?Will a child learn to assimilate information if we tell them how it must be organized?

What To Do When We the Adults Want to Create

If we want to create something pretty, something with straight lines and perfect glue jobs, then there’s a simple solution:  Create a notebook ourselves!

Work alongside your child making your notebook as they create their own.

When we lead our children by our example, rather than control them with our druthers, we will all have a better time. We’ll also learn more about the subject, while we discover more about ourselves and each other.

You can share supplies, swap information, bond and learn. Together.

Simply Said

When it comes to notebooking, leave control at the door and embrace the creative process.

Share supplies, swap information, bond and learn.

Together.

Does your family notebook? I would have been lost in the sea of homeschool learning without a throng of three-ring binders at my beck and call.

As a retired homeschooler (one in college, one graduated now in the work force), I still love my binders and use them daily. Each one is set up a little differently based on the need at hand and the goals I am working toward. It’s rather similar to how we moderns use social media.

Just as there are many platforms for creating and maintaining social connections online, there are numerous ways to set up a notebook.

Here are three options and how they relate to social media.

Notebooking the Pinterest Way

Pinterest is a data collection agency. We are its agents.  Simply gathering intel, we pin an image, adding an optional caption or comment as the mood strikes.

Notebooking the Pinterest way works well for assignments such as timelines. Children can “pin” a timeline image on a timeline board or into a timeline notebook. Or children can create their own images — such as bloggers may do for their Pinterest boards — based on what they’ve learned in their history or science curriculum.

Notebooking the Twitter Way

Twitter’s platform is more about words, a limited number of words – 140 characters, with an occasional image. This form of notebooking can be related to worksheets. Children have a limited amount of space on a few lines to summarize the information they need to digest.

Although worksheets have had some bad press among homeschoolers, they have value for condensing information. Creativity can be encouraged by teaching word choice, strong adjectives. For example, the worm larva isn’t cool; it’s fascinating or moldy looking.

Like Twitter, there is no room to ramble on a worksheet.

Notebooking the Facebook Way

Facebook offers a template for individuality.  Instead of giving us a blank page like an empty scrapbook page, to fill up with our thoughts, our images, our plans and our discoveries, Facebook offers a format to work within.

We aren’t allowed to scrawl anywhere on the page we’d like. We have to color with the lines, so to speak, but with plenty of ways to do just that: walls, feeds, photos, notes, events, and more.

Facebook’s style is an example of creative notebooking, such as could be used for a history or geography notebook.

How to Notebook the Facebook Way

Mom or dad can assign (preferably in writing) the basic elements to incorporate into the notebook design, such as sketch, graph, opinion page, article clipping, timeline entry, summary, copywork for the littles, etc. Notebooking the Facebook way is an example of creative notebooking..

If a child needs a creative lead, offer template pages in a manila folder or sorted in an accordion file. Allow the children to record the information in a manner that catches their creative eye.

Social Media Notebooking: Various Platforms for a Variety of Edu-Needs

Just as there is no right or wrong to the bones of social technology, there is no right or wrong way to notebook.

It’s how we use the platform to its fullest potential with goals in mind compatible to the platform.

How Do We Choose?

• If we want our children to absorb knowledge while being creative, we should give them a Facebook-style notebook, rather than a Pinterest-style one.
• If we expect memorization or summation of facts, then Twitter-style may be the way to go.
• If exposure to a variety of images, say of butterflies, is the goal, then set up a Pinterest-style notebook, using plastic multi-photo pages to sort index cards or magazine clippings in a 3-ring binder.

It’s Your Turn

What style of notebooking appeals to your children most?