One of my favorite parts of homeschooling is the times that it gives our family to talk about spiritual things. When we get up (making and breakfast together), when we walk drive our minivan along the road, when we sit at home (doing schoolwork, playing, preparing and eating meals, or relaxing in the evening playing games or watching videos), and when we lie down (as we do “prayers and talking time” individually with each of our kids at night), our goal is to make learning spiritual lessons fun and part of our everyday life.
We have used lots of different types of materials for our family devotionals. One of the things we’ve used for several years now are the Family Times Virtue Packs. These are kits produced by ReThink Group and Pastor Reggie Joiner from Northpoint Church in Atlanta, Geogia.
Our family has had the opportunity to worship at this church a couple times. The Senior Pastor at Northpoint is Andy Stanley (Charles Stanley’s son), and I really enjoy his messages and the work his church does to encourage healthy Christian living for families. So, if you’re ever in the Atlanta area and have the opportunity to attend one of the 3 Northpoint churches (yes, there are 3 campuses to this Super church), you should definitely take advantage of the opportunity and go! Here’s a link to a message he gave. http://www.northpoint.org/new , click on the video titled “everybody’s invited” on the right hand side of the page.
But I digress . . . back to the topic of Family Times Virtue Packs.
We have amassed quite a collection of these Family Times Virtue Packs over the last several years, and I have been blessed to receive a bunch more to share with my friends. So I’m going to be giving them away, each month until they are gone.
Let’s start out with the one on the topic of “Gratitude”, it being Thanksgiving time and all. The Virtue Packs include a CD with an audio story that teaches your kids about the “virtue of the month”, anand some parent teaching about how to help encourage that virtue as well. They also include 4 Bible stories and some discussion points to read with your kids. Four “meal time” discussions to use each week are also included, as are some encouragement cards to give your kids as they are working on their virtues.
Our family really loves these!
So every time you comment you’ll get a chance to win this family devotional virtue pack, and on November 23rd I’ll have one of those random number choosing programs pick the lucky winner! Then we’ll do it again the following week for a Virtue Pack for December.
Sound like fun?
So what do you do as a family to learn about God’s character? And if you don’t do it as much as you’d like, what’s your biggest stumbling block?
Nancy
