The next page in our “God Wants Me To Be” book taken from our Christian Characteristic Traits list is: Intelligent – Someone who is eager to learn!

Proverbs 1:5a says, “Let wise people listen and add to what they have learned.” I love that in God’s eyes it is not our IQ that makes us intelligent!  It is our desire to continue to learn new things… to add to what we have learned.

Many of you know that I plan on homeschooling the boys, and I’ve been using the internet/my brain to help me plan preschool-type activities for the boys for the past couple of years.  In fact, many of the things we’ve done have wound up here, on Impress Your Kids!  But sometimes, my brain doesn’t work the way I want it to, even when I’m looking at ideas on the internet.  I wind up struggling with things to do during the week of repeating things we’ve done before.

So I did it.  I bought a curriculum.  I can’t believe it… it feels like such a huge step to me – this is really happening!  And I didn’t even get a preschool curriculum – Elias already knows what the preschool set would be teaching him.  I went straight for the kindergarten curriculum!  Wow….

This is what we got… All of this is a complete year’s worth of lessons!

• Alphabet Flashcards
• Easy-to-use Teacher’s Manual {BONUS!}
• Student Materials (includes student worksheets, teaching charts, game cards, monthly calendars, short vowel song cards, and a 100 chart for math!)
• Cuisenaire Rods Alphabet Book
• Cuisenaire Rods Small Group Pack
• What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs?
• Introduction to Classical Music
• Insect Lore Ant Hill {seriously, how cool is this?}

Can you tell I’m excited about this?  I’m excited about the structure, the constancy, the content, the… everything (This will not take the place of the things I am already working on with the boys – this is in addition to all the stuff I post here!)!

Now, I share this not because I want to say how intelligent my kids are – not at all.  Remember this?  Elias still does not believe what I tell his as truth or fact for most things.  This reluctance to learn from me is also combined with his desire to go to a real elementary school – because that’s where learning happens, or so he tells me.  Therefore, he does not want to learn at home or from me.  Period.

However, I am praying hard.  We are participating in a weekly homeschooling co-op with some friends who have older boys, and that helps a bit (he sees the older boys are learning from their moms and from me, so it makes it OK).  We also have some dear friends who will also be using the My Father’s World curriculum for their pre-school kids, and we will be doing some activities with them as we go through the study.  I hope that surrounding Elias with prayer and learning will instill in him the desire to learn – the eagerness to learn that God wants for us!

That’s what I’m praying for – that the boys will always want to “…listen and add to what they have learned (Proverbs 1:5a).” Being wise and intelligent on God’s terms is so much better than being wise or intelligent in the world’s eyes!

How do you try to instill the love of learning in your kids?

Disclaimer: I am not in anyway affiliated with My Father’s World – I bought the products myself and am sharing my excitement/opinion with you.  We are, however, a part of Amazon.com‘s affiliate program, so if you purchase items from Amazon.comthrough the links in this post, we will receive a small affiliate payment at no additional cost to you.

This post is linked up with Homeschool Creations’ Preschool Corner!

Exhort: to incite by argument or advice : urge strongly : to give warnings or advice : make urgent appeals.

If you were to start a new series on your blog that you would hope to use to encourage yourself and others, I would exhort you to start with a simple word or idea – I do not recommend starting with teaching a 4 year old and a 2 year old about exhortation.

… let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24). As parents, we are continually exhorting our children – encouraging, urging forward, teaching our little ones how to love and do good deeds.  Even if we don’t think we are exhorting, we are – I think it’s a natural part of teaching those we love.  We love them, and we want them to love and to do well and to do good things, so we exhort!

Teaching our little ones to be exhorters themselves can be difficult.  I think Elias has a gift of encouragement – he is always telling people how well they are doing and exclaiming over their abilities/attempts/activities.  But I think the natural self, even if gifted with encouragement, has a hard time exhorting.  I mentioned last time how Elias encourages Donovan towards trouble instead of away… wanting to do “fun” things that are not allowed (jumping on beds, throwing balls in the house, etc.), so he delights in Donovan’s lack of self control as he does those things Elias knows he shouldn’t.  Tattling is also a part of this…  when a child comes to “tattle” on another, he is missing his chance to exhort the other to do good.

We have punished Elias for egging his little brother on and for tattling, but we have not exhorted him to exhort Donovan on to good deeds.  That has been our first step.  I think I will also be making a chart (see Amanda’s posts here and here) to help him see when he has the chance to exhort to good deeds or disobedience.

And after starting off with a quiet bang, we quickly fizzled out on exhortation crafts.  That’s OK, though.  Mulling over it for a while and continuing to talk to the boys about it has helped me to come up with something that I think is really fun, and we’ll add to it with each character trait we study…

Introducing “God Wants Me To Be… a book about Christian character traits,” by Elias and Donovan!

I cut out a LOT of pictures of people from magazines, and with each trait we work on, we will copy the trait, definition, and Bible verse into our book, and the boys will select what picture(s) they think illustrate the character trait.

Here is a picture of a little girl telling her friend how to love and do good deeds!

At the end of The List we will have a book of 51 verses that tell us how God wants us to be.  These are similar to the other verse “posters” we’ve made in the past, and I’ve wanted to bind them all up into a “book,” too – perhaps we’ll have a couple of volumes of verses that the boys will be able to look back upon for years to come.

What do you think about your role as exhorter?  How do you help your children encourage others?

Amanda really spoke to me with her post about making time to craft and play with your kids….  Unfortunately, it has taken me almost a month since her post to make the time!  Sickness, birthdays, more snow, and everyday living took over here for a while.  I wasn’t picking times or topics – I did pick some brains, though, and I sure did pick up!  Spring cleaning got started with the putting away of Christmas decorations and hasn’t stopped.

Look at what I found while picking up!  My fridge – hey, it’s white!  Buried under the family pictures, children’s drawings, delivery menus, and football schedules were some wonderful resources that I forgot I had (Wise Words for Moms found here).

How could I have forgotten this sheet of paper?  It was just given to us during our parenting class last fall….

I remember thinking that it would be awesome if my sons had all of these “Christian Character Traits,” but wow, that seems like a lot of work!

Ehem.  Remembering again why I am here with my sons, the paper was moved to the front of a clean(er) fridge, and has been staring at me for a couple of weeks until a light bulb went off in my head.  Here is my topic!  Granted, it’s huge… and intimidating, but so is parenting, if you really think about it {{shudder}}.

The List is 51 character traits with simple definitions and Bible references to help… It’s in alphabetical order, but I’m going to jump around a bit.  I hope to get really creative (hey – that’s one of the traits!), and sometimes I might do two traits together (“neat” and “orderly” seem like they go hand in hand to me!).

We start with “Exhorter – Definition: Urge others towards love and good deeds.” Hebrews 10:24 (NIrV) says, “Let us consider how we can stir up one another to love. Let us help one another to do good works.”

In our house right now, we have a lot of exhorting going on… to jump on beds, throw toys in the house, disobey in whatever way a 4 year old big brother wants his 2 year old little brother to get in trouble…

So I drew a simple picture for each of the boys – one boy running to do “something” while the other speaks LOVE to him.

While we colored, we did a bit of role playing (Elias and I did… Donovan colored away while I prayed that this is soaking into his heart, too)… “What is your brother going to do?” “Run away!”  “What are you telling him in this picture?” “Go away, Donovan!”  “Well, look at the ‘words’ coming out of your mouth? Are you saying nice things or mean things to him?” “…nice things.”  “Great! What kind of nice things are you saying?” “I love you, Donovan!”  “Wow, that is nice!  Now, Donovan is pulling all of Mommy’s books off of the bookcase… now what nice things can you say to him to help him do good things?” “Donovan, don’t do that – you’ll get in trouble!”

We colored and talked some more… we hadn’t done any role playing yet with Elias, but I think it did work really well.  I also substituted some words in and out to help explain what “exhort” means.  The Bible versions I used (NASB and NIrV) use the words “stimulate,” “stir,” and “help” – I also used “urge,” “encourage,” “tell…” all interchangeably.

So this is a start.  Not the most creative start, but sometimes we just need a start of some kind…