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Posts from the ‘House Building’ Category

Apr 6

Numbering Our Days 2

Think about this: we have long-range goals, and short-terms plans for every aspect of our lives.  We have a five-year plan for saving for the down payment on our dream house.  We have the forty-year plan to prepare for financial independence at retirement age.  We know the very year both our careers and our finances will merge to make it reasonable to start a family.  But when it comes to our personal responsibility to master the Bible, the catch-as-catch-can plan is by far the most popular.

The most far-sighted of us may maintain the four-chapters-a-day-habit to read through the Bible in a year, but sad to say, even this worthy project is often set aside after one completion (or even before!) or becomes a ritualistic habit maintained year in and year out with little conscious thought. We wait for some mystical sense of where to arbitrarily begin reading (in five minutes or less) in order to find Scripture’s pertinent counsel for our pressing immediate needs.  The enormity of Scripture, the overwhelming responsibility of mastering it all, our own laziness to remain spoon-fed babies, its demand that we “do” it and not just “hear” it, our great ignorance of how to proceed in a personal, voluntary pursuit of learning apart from the forced school-test-required reading setting—all this has had a part in paralyzing us from immersing ourselves in His Truth. Read more

Apr 4

Numbering Our Days 1

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90: 12).

What does numbering our days have to do with becoming wise?

The numbering, does not simply mean to keep track of how many days a person has lived. It means valuing each day, acting as if each day might be the last, being certain that each day counts, and that no day drifts aimlessly into another without purpose or cause. You could say we are to attend to each day as a treasured commodity, not as if days are available in endless supply. Read more

Apr 2

Time Trials

Time Tracking Activity Chart This is a blank chart for you to pick whatever you want to time. Believe me, this can be fun!

Time Trials This is a chart of suggested activities to try timing, with room to record 4 trials for the same item. You can use this as an idea prompter in case you have trouble dreaming up things to time. You can use it for yourself to get base line times for activities you want to coordinate for yourself. You can use it for a family night as a time trial Olympics. You can assign it as a project for teens to work through timing  themselves.

Give that cell phone stopwatch a work out!

Mar 28

Better Birthdays

Serious about adding to your child’s life skills consistently?

Try this idea of linking every new birthday with a new job around the house. Click here for a list of ideas to have Better Birthdays.

Remember Longer Lasting Gifts from awhile back? It has other ideas for gifts that are not the latest item on the toy shelf.

Mar 26

Skill Training 4: Places to Start

Selecting jobs to train:

  • Start with major jobs groups that can be applied to many arenas:

Picking up and putting away in proper receptacles clutter (toys and clothes expand to magazines and shoes in the living room and, eventually, textbooks and paper supplies on the work desk). Sweeping un-carpeted floors with tiny brooms expands to bathroom and kitchen floors, basement areas and porches and decks. Cleaning a bathroom sink moves into the kitchen. Dusting floorboard molding moves in time to floor lamps, lower shelves, bookcases, and knick-knacks.

  • Start with tasks that need daily (twice daily, in the case of picking up toys) and weekly attention, growing out to less frequent tasks.
  • Select tasks that start with personal responsibility for their own sphere of life: their own bodies (food and cleanliness), their own clothing, their own living equipment (beds, chairs, tables, etc.) and their own possessions (books, toys, outdoor equipment, musical instruments).
  • Once a cleaning module has grown into a component of several smaller modules (the individual modules of making the bed, putting away toys, and hanging up clothes have all been combined into the task of “cleaning the bedroom,” for example), keep awkward, time consuming jobs as separate, special event tasks (reorganizing the dresser drawers, cleaning the bathtub, straightening junk drawers).

 

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