The meme below caught my eye as I scrolled through Facebook. Thanks to COVID-19, every parent is having to learn how to guide a homeschooler.
For many of us, the new reality of supervising our children’s online schooling leaves us wondering how we will do this. Can we do this? How will we manage our work and their school? How will we organize our day? Psalm 11:3 says, “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Here’s what we can do: we can develop a godly perspective to see the potential for our families to thrive during this uncertain season. Here are five survival skills for the “new to homeschooling” parent.
Begin your day with prayer and Bible reading. This sets the day up for success for you and your children! Encourage them to have a Bible on their level and help them find their morning spot, perhaps in the same room with you. Make room to model this discipline. Beginning the day with prayer re-calibrates our spiritual compass to the Lord, and the discipline of “scripture before screens” focuses us on the Good News instead of the constant bad news.
Pray for missionaries at breakfast. Missionaries save big decisions for their birthdays because they know so many around the world are praying for them on this day. Move a map or globe to the table and pray for the world during breakfast. Click here to find a list of missionary birthdays for each day. Missionaries who have initials are in secure areas of service.
Look for opportunities to be a helper. Once Mr. Rogers shared what his mom told him to do when there were scary things in the news. The answer was simple: Look for the helpers. As parents we can help our children look for and more importantly as believers, we can be the helpers! Whether it is putting bears in your windows, or writing scripture on your driveway with sidewalk chalk, or making posters for nursing home patients, leading your children to be helpers will help them see the bigger picture of what is happening outside the walls of our house. Make it a goal to think about ways that we can help others outside of our family during this crisis.
Allow active and creative time each day. This could be a daily walk around the neighborhood, an online art lesson, an exercise workout, or your favorite camp’s daily post. Allow your child to have a choice and outlet for activity and creativity while you make room for the same opportunity for yourself.
Add in fun to your day and include a missions activity. National WMU is providing free resources and Facebook live lessons for families to use for preschoolers and children.
Preschoolers: Facebook family ideas and lessons , Free Resources for Preschoolers
Children: Facebook missions lesson , Free Resources for Children
Trish Jackson - Missions Lifestyle Strategist for Preschool, Children & Students
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