Well I’m late with a recap because I have been pretty ill with a respiratory thing. Here’s what we did last week in our unit on homekeeping.

• We defined keeping home. We looked up scriptures and discussed things needed to keep home–diligence, organization, etc. We discussed what it means to “bless” your home. 
• We learned about the history of cleaning through the ages with Cleaning the House by John Mala and 300 Years of Housekeeping Collectibles by Linda Franklin.
  We drew our unhappy (messy home). We will finish the unit with drawing a happy (clean home).
• We read several cleaning books: Five Little Monkeys with Nothing to Do, In a Minute!, Spring Cleaning, Boo and Baa on a Cleaning Spree and Home Tools among them.
• We are coloring a picture each day from Doorposts’ coloring book on Psalm 31.
• We memorized Psalm 31:10.
• We made a kid-safe cleaning solution with baking soda, Borax and water. Now they have a special spray they like to use.
• They did worksheets for math. 
• And more…

It was a fun week. We learned a lot about cleaning and God’s idea of home keeping and blessing. This week we will continue, but my health has put things on a bit of a hold so far. We will start to work on a schedule and lots more that I will post next week.

In my last post I talked about the latest turn in my journey. I am venturing into unit studies and already I am more at home than I have ever been as a home educator. I have come home in more ways than one.

You may be surprised to learn about the topic of my first unit study. It is home keeping. You read right. (It is called home education, right?) That may seem a strange place to start, but you haven’t been to my house. It is a struggle for all of us to stay organized and orderly and it stops here. Now. Here is a snapshot of how this will work at our house.

We will begin with God’s design for women, using a concordance and Webster’s 1828 dictionary. We will also see how God intends for us to live, as children of God. We will note principles, such as God’s orderly nature, God’s Principle of Individuality and Christian self-government. These principles will be the over-arching themes throughout this study. They will reason from God’s Word for themselves what their unique roles as children and as young women are, liberating them to be what God intended.

Once the foundation has been laid and they know why we need to keep a neat home, we will move to the how. This will be things like the history of cleaning around the world, lots of children’s books (fiction and non-fiction) about the topic, samples from literature like Little House on the Prairie. We will mix our own kid-safe cleaning solutions, sew aprons, create charts, estimate task times, and by the end of the month we will have created a chart to keep a neat home together.

After this month is done, we will continue this training. Each Monday will be a sort of “Home Economics” day. We will learn all the things it takes to manage a home well, and do it with Joy. This will include meal preparation and food safety, sewing, cleaning skills, budgeting, shopping and making menus and time management. The other four days will fall into our usual lesson routine. As my son grows older we will teach him these things as well, along with some “manly things” that he will need to know.

It seems strange to say, but I am so excited to realize that it’s okay to teach my kids what I think they should know in this area, and that it can be a part of learning, just as math or history. So I feel the liberty to learn along with them as we start this new life–at home. I hope you will follow along and offer any insight you may have.

My family is benefitting from the changes I’ve implemented from Managers of Their Homes (MOTH). One change is that we have added a “training” time. This is a small block of time where I can teach stuff they need to learn, like the proper way to wash your hands, shake out a rug or sweep a floor. This has been a great time for us together.

We were folding laundry this week and I was demonstrating the way we fold towels and clothes. I discussed why we fold things the way we do but that other people have their own way too. So we moved on to shirts. I was showing 7dd and 5dd how to fold a shirt. My 5dd said, “So you just hold it to your heart like this.” She stretched out the shirt against her body, with her little arms stretched wide. I asked what she meant. “Like this mom, with the neck against your heart.” Well, it’s not exactly the way I showed them, but I thought it was really profound. Laundry is a loving task that should have “heart” in it.

When I do laundry and other “mundane” tasks, I am blessing my family. I am touching their clothes, holding them close to me and carefully folding them so they will have clean clothes to wear. I am smoothing their sheets so they will have a warm bed to sleep in. I chop vegetables and meat so they will have healthy bodies. I scrub their little heads so their hair will be clean. Each task is a labor of love, coming from my mother’s heart through my hands. I hope they know that somehow.

So yes, I do hold the clothes close to my heart. And try not to think about the day when they won’t need me to fold their clothes anymore. Then they will fold the clothes of someone they love and hold them close. And maybe I’ll bring my laundry over to their house for a change!

I thought I would share this handy chart I found a while back. I’ve had it for years and it’s really great. It breaks down different chores into age groups. I converted it to PDF for easy viewing and printing.

Download PDF Chore Age Reference List chart

Some questions you can answer if you are so inclined:
Do your kids do a lot of chores?
Do you give a lot of thought to their age, in relation to the task?
Are there things you won’t let your kids do around the house for one reason or another?
Do you offer incentives in your family, like points or allowance, that is tied to chore completion?
Is excellence important or is it just about getting the job done?
Do your children have the same jobs all the time or do they switch it up?
Do you assign jobs according to your child’s strengths in an area?
Feel free to link to this chart. (Please give me credit for it.)

I am trying to get more into a habit of daily chores for everyone. To this point it has been hit and miss. For me it is about teaching a life of excellence and integrity. I am concerned about teaching the self-government necessary to achieve a balnced and orderly life. I want them to see in God’s Word the principles of diligence, industry and perseverence. These are invaluable in life.

We should live our lives in a way that makes God look good. I mean, we should have neat homes, clean clothes and healthy food to eat. We should take care of our bodies and care for the needs of others. Now that is easier said than done, but I believe it is possible. So let’s get that floor mopped!

Yes, I’ll get to the upper grades too, but I wanted to talk a bit about the material in his Guide that will make you say, “Wow! I didn’t know that was in there! That’s very good to know.” Well, maybe something close to that anyway.

“Some Questions Answered” (p. 80-83) gives helpful answers to common PA concerns in a nutshell. He briefly addresses questions like, “Why the emphasis on American history?” and,

“We need a prepackaged program to implement this,” and, “Do I have to teach one of the seven principles all the time?”

“Part II: Education for the American Christian Home” (p. 85) is a practical synopsis of applying the Biblical Principal Approach to the home. Mr. Rose and his wife Barbara talk about their PA home, including almost any subject you’d want to see principles applied to. “Developing America’s Christian Character,”"The Seven Principles Illustrated in the Home” (good stuff) and”A Personal Application of This Approach in Training Children” (I LOVE thispart!) are the three subheadings here. The third part (beginning on p. 97) addresses PA thinking applied to everyday life:
discipline
money issues
voluntary consent and private property (aka sharing)
voluntary union
home government
a home constitution
Christian self-government
corporal punishment
manners
Sabbath
activities and free time
and more…

This will answer just about any question you have about what a PA home looks like. This whole part of the book will excite you because it shows PA, not in a classroom, but in a home. And it reveals how PA shapes your thinking and affects how your govern your family. I can really appreciate the practical insight because they aren’t talking “pie in the sky” intellectual mumbo jumbo. They speak simply, from a humble heart, about how PA worked in their family. Now I can see how “How the Seed of Local Self-Government is Planted” (p. 95) can apply to my family. Right now. Today.

For me it’s great to learn about these principles and how they apply to the world around me and to America. But to see how it applies to me and my little chicks brings PA to a whole new level for me. And that’s what it’s all about: bringing PA home to change my own world, so that I can go out from here and change the outside world.