On Sunday, the pastor at our temporary church home taught from Psalm 121. This psalm has long been one of my favorites, and each time I read it, I am reminded of the Lord’s protection. If you are not familiar with Psalm 121, it starts out like this: I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Psalm 121:1-2 This psalm is part of a group of psalms known as the Songs of Ascent, meaning that they were sung on the journey up to…
-
-
Welcome to the final installment (for now) in this series on Child Chore Training! Last week I gave specific examples of what this currently looks like in our home. Today I want to share how and why we pay our children for doing chores. I guess we should start with why we chose to pay our son for his chores every week. First, we decided at age six he was ready to begin learning some basic money management skills. We want him to grow up with an understanding of how much things cost, how long it takes to earn enough…
-
We had a house showing today. I am not sure how many we have had now, but every time it stresses me out so much. Today was no different. I cleaned most everything yesterday because I knew we would be out of the house this morning for prior commitments and would only have time and energy for vacuuming and final tidying in the afternoon. Still, the whole day I was on edge. I snapped at the kids for stupid little things. I felt discouraged and frustrated. I complained to God about how long this process is taking and grumbled about…
-
Last week I shared a little about how we started with teaching our children to be contributing members of the household by doing some simple chores. I thought that this week I would give a few more specifics about how this is currently working in our home. My 6 year old son has a few different categories of jobs to do every weekday. Saturdays and Sundays are usually chore-free days, although he knows that we may ask for help with special projects on the weekends. Each morning he has what we call his “Morning Routine.” These are things that are…
-
My husband has been fascinated with aviation since he was a small boy. He has always wanted to fly some kind of aircraft, and he has plans to eventually get his Sport Pilot license and build his own light sport airplane. Due to this interest, we have watched a lot of videos about flying, including a series of docu-dramas about plane crashes and what caused them. One of the most memorable of these shows, for me, at least, was one about an airplane that got stuck in a holding pattern outside a busy airport and ran out of fuel before…