“I love work, I could watch it for hours!” It’s one thing to demonstrate work to children but it is entirely different to effectively teach children about work. In our ATI home education program my family and I have been studying the concept that God gives bread through work. I can honestly say that it is not a topic I would have picked out and set for the family myself! We’re working on it because it is the major concept of Wisdom Booklet 34.
The benefit of following a program of material and working off a preset series of topics is that you are forced to work on concepts that you do not want to address. I say I didn’ t want to address it, but who wants children to grow up thinking that everything will come to them via “The Secret” or via the government, or someone else’s efforts?
One of the things we do in our family is to read God’s Word each day, and we search for new meaning from familiar passages. Today’s readings were Psalms 19, 49, 79, 109, and 139 and Proverbs 19. One of the challenges we have for our of our daily Bible Time as we call it is to find verses that match or are somehow aligned to our home education program theme.
This was quite easy today. I read “Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep; and an idle soul shall suffer hunger.” Proverbs 19:15.
Its easy to talk about these concepts but it is really hard to instill them into our children. If my children don’t want to work, what can I do? Many mothers struggle with this predicament. There are no easy answers but there is one thing you can do to encourage a worker mindset in your family.
Throw out your television, turn off your free to air radio and download books and audio books and articles that talk about people working. Lamplighter Publishing reprinted a great book I like, “The Boy Who Never Lost A Chance”. There are many books out there. Make your home environment one that promotes work and wisdom and has examples of people benefiting from good character.
There is one thing that many mothers find it hard to do, but which will eventually pay off in “kitchen free” days. That one thing is let your children cook in the kitchen. Your daughters will love it, and so may your sons. Just be prepared for a long hard haul to get them to learn how to clean up after themselves.
We started down the track of bread making with our oldest son first, and then 3 of our girls, and now our next oldest son. They love it. We’re still working on the “work creates mess that needs cleaning up” concept. But it is worth it. God provides bread through work.
ATI Wisdom Booklets are part of the ATI program. This can be found at the website http://www.ati.iblp.org/ati
More Ativan Articles