progress

I came across an especially interesting blog the other day, and was so pleased to discover another homeschooling mother, who is much more eloquent and learned than I, had put together PDFs of many Orthodox resources for children.

I just finished printing and laminating a Child's Book of Hours. I am excited, because I was rather at a loss where to begin teaching my children about Orthodoxy. We'd been saying prayers, but the resources offered on Evlogia are a great help to me in instruction. The best thing is that I really think the things suggested will bring my children's attention to the prayer cycle in a more kid-friendly way.

My favorite was the Montessori three part cards of the hours for little ones and days. I had no idea how to encorporate Elijah (about to be 3) and Elisabeth (just turned one). If you've raised kids, you know that one, two, and three year olds LOVE cards. I know have a way to involve them that they will enjoy.

I also loved reading this perspective on teaching your children without exactly instructing them:

"A few years ago I began the practice of praying the Hours. With a small, homemade coil bound copy of an unpublished computer file given to me by my spiritual father, I began to enter into the daily cycle of prayer. It wasn't long before the children noticed that I had developed a habit of retreating into my bedroom every three hours. Although my goal was to escape their attention and retreat in quiet, curiosity took hold of them. Seeing me standing before my bedroom icon corner, they would enter the room quietly so as not to interrupt.

As time went on, one by one the children began asking for a copy of the Book of Hours. Paul and I put the file on a thumb drive and had a few copies printed out at Kinkos, giving each of our children a copy of their own. What began as a quiet retreat, slowly but surely, became a gathering.

I have never instructed any of my children, telling them that we would pray at set hours throughout the day. Instead what happened was quite natural and evolved in an organic and very real (and slow) way. No longer retreating alone into the quiet of my room, we now regularly gather together, every three hours, before the family icon corner.

This is not to say that my example has always been worthy of imitation. It has also involved my getting noticeably sidetracked and missing those three hour intervals, sometimes for days or weeks at a time. But by God's grace (and through the prayers of my spiritual father) I didn't loose courage and approached our often abandoned icon corner, each time a little less sure of my strength, each time asking God to help me to come back at the next Hour. Perhaps, in the long run, the example of my persistence in spite of obvious weakness proved stronger than the appearance of strength. If she can do it, anyone can.

Over time the praying of the Hours has become the pulse of our day. Laboring as a family, the temptation to abandon prayer has been lessened. When taken as a whole, as a family, there is always someone who is eager to begin once again, unknowingly encouraging the rest of us to gather just one more time."


When we go through hours of one-on-one instruction during homeschooling, it is sometimes nice for the children to feel that there is not a concentration on them. It's like when I taught my oldest son to read, and didn't know my daughter was learning by osmosis...when I went to start at the beginning with her I realized she was all ready to start reading. She knew her consonant and vowel sounds perfectly from listening, and could easily read beginner words. She's actually surpassed her older brother in reading skills, and I believe it is not only the fact that children are different but that she learned to love reading because it was not pressed upon her...she heard so many times the correct way that it was almost second nature to her by the time she had to actually apply it. I've homeschooled for a few years now, and this happens a lot. It's why homeschooling is so wonderful. I didn't think about prayers in the same context, but I was enlightened and inspired by the above quote. I didn't have a ready approach, other than to call the kids together even if they clearly didn't want to be there. I feel much more equipped to go at this teaching the faith business now.

Sorry if this post has grammatical errors, but I wanted to jot this down...off to make bread, make granola, put the toddler to bed, put the bigger kids to bed, etc.

Oh, as a recent gift from my husband was a touch phone, I was also happy to find this same blogger's link to the Dynamic Horologian and Psalter. Maybe some of you busy people could find use from it, too. Or at least, those with babies constantly in hand, on hip, and underfoot.

Christ is in our midst!