My Father's World

I know that the official "school year" is just about to start for most of our neighbors but we have been "doing school" for quite a while now. We just couldn't help ourselves! My kids have been so excited about school time ever since the new "box" arrived.
I went to an amazing homeschool conference and resource fair back in May in North Carolina. What an amazing experience. There were tons of homeschool families in the same place. It was absolutely heavenly! In the resource fair, you could find any kind of book, curriculum, teaching tool you can imagine. Even a few other things like this magnet I found for the back of my van :)

Anyway, the conference was more than a shopping excursion. There were more seminars than I could ever get to. I am so glad though that I popped into one seminar called "Keeping your Preschoolers Occupied during School Time" or something to that effect. This one was particularly appealing to me since last year I had even numbers; two preschoolers and two school age. In that seminar I was introduced to Lauri Toys. They are fun, appealing and educational all in one. At the same time, I was introduced to My Father's World.

Keep in mind that up to this point, we used one curriculum for everything. We used Abeka. Don't misunderstand me. Abeka is wonderful. It is strong in all areas and very aggressive. You will have plenty of worksheets, lots of teaching aids and a day full of work. It is just like "real school" at home. Looking back now, I know that is never what I truly wanted. Why should it really matter to my kids where they would spend hours sitting in a desk doing worksheet after worksheet. It mattered to me of course. I would never risk sending them to public school. At least if they were home, they were safe. Plus, the 1-1 student teacher ratio did cut the time in half. However, I still wasn't grasping all of the wonderful opportunities that homeschooling had to offer.

I spent about an hour at that conference in the MFW booth talking to one of the owners and learning why both I and my children would like this approach so much better. It was hands on. Instead of using worksheets, we would use real life activities to learn. There would still be a daily lesson plan for each day, a strong math component and a phonics based reading program but the best was yet to come. I learned what a real "Christ Centered" curriculum looked like. It was not just incorporating christian elements into each subject. Every aspect of the day grew out of the bible lesson for the day. Even the math and science were beautifully woven together into the bible lesson. This is what sold me. We pray that our children can see that Christ truly is the center of our home and family. This was another way to show them.

So far, we are loving it! We look forward to school time each day. I highly recommend My Father's World for anyone who wants Christ at the center of their homeschool.