Say Cheese!

From the very beginning, my husband and I felt the Lord calling us to make God's Word the foundation of our homeschool studies. So not only do we use the Bible as our guide for spiritual life, we have also made it the 'spine' upon which the majority of our academic studies are based.

At first you may think, how is that possible? Won't there be huge 'gaps' in your children's education if you limit yourself to studying only those topics found in the Bible? But for our family the answer would have to be a resounding 'no'. In fact, making God's Word the foundation our girls' education has given us great peace and confidence in our homeshooling experience.

I will not go into all the details of our daily schedule here, but in a nutshell, we study the Scriptures in the morning, first gleaning all the spiritual lessons the Lord has for us that day. This also includes vocabulary, geography, and cultural studies from the lesson. In the afternoon, we then study any science, history,or sociology lessons that are associated the morning's lesson. For example, in the morning if we study the story of Samson eating the honey from the lion's carcass, we might take a field trip that afternoon to a local bee keeper and learn all about bees and making honey. Or when studying about King Saul's quest to kill David, we may spend the afternoon studying the serious consequences of jealousy. The complexity of the lesson of course depends upon the age of the child.

Now for the first few years, I put these mini-unit lessons together myself, but later (and quite thankfully) found a wonderful curriculum written by Dr. David L. Bedell that follows this same idea. Most days we follow Dr. Bedell's lessons, other times we select our own topic to study. Either way, it makes for a very interesting homeschool experience.

One of our lessons this week was from 1 Samuel 17 where David's father tells him to bring bread and cheese to his brothers who were facing a possible battle with the Philistines. So after our afternoon Bedell lesson on 'how cheese comes from mold' (eeew!), we decided to spice up the lesson and make our own cheese! (photo above) We went online, found a kid friendly cheese recipe, and in about an hour had some delicious homemade cheese! It was great fun, we learned alot, and it was tasty too. I love using the Bible as our homeschool curriculum!

And for those of you who may be wondering about how we study history beyond the Ancients...Dr. Bedell does a wonderful job of relating American and world history events to Scripture. As these topics arise in his lessons, we read wonderful Historical biographies that correspond. As for Math, that's where we draw the line. Math curriculum, Teaching Textbooks has become my newest best friend!